If I Wanted a Job, I’d Apply For One

Posted on 30/04/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Today, I experienced some frustration that annoyed me beyond comprehension. Lovely and I did our best to keep our neighborhood Walmart from closing it’s doors. We had not shopped for groceries for a couple of weeks now, and our cupboards were bare. It was time to give up and shop. The big news during the week was that four Chicagoland Walmart stores closed because they were losing money. It’s my guess that the effect of the relaxation of penalties for shop lifting have been measured, and one of the world’s largest retailers has voted with it’s feet. In other words, “let’s get out of town before they steal the shelves bare, and strip all the copper wire from the building.” Anyway, we did our best to fill a shopping cart with food. We have a habit of guessing how many dollars are in the cart before we check out. Both of us guessed two hundred dollars.

A New Humanless Checkout
The Traditional Human Checkout

Usually, these stores had as many as twenty lines for check out with humans scanning and bagging. Today, there were only two human staffed checkout lines. In their place were two corrals of fifteen self checkout stations with one human overseer. Walmart has aggressively been working on reducing labor costs since the fifteen dollar minimum wage was introduced. Secondly, since COVID there has been, and still is a huge labor shortage.

Lovey and I parked at one of the computer operated checkout stations and began scanning. We bought a lot of fruits and vegetables and learned that scanning cucumbers, peppers, and onions can be challenging. Each piece of vegetable, and fruit has a label with a bar code. It all sounds great except that the labels are tiny and the bar codes don’t read or scan at all. The computer then asks you to find the item in it’s database by clicking on a photo. Of course this took some time, since it was the very first time I tried scanning a tomato, and a green pepper. Neither was shown as a photo on the screen, so it involved typing in a description of the item, or the four digit unscannable number that was on the tiny label, and then answering how many of the item there was. Okay, I got past that frustration, but then proceeded to try to place the items into a plastic bag that hangs on the station. Plastic material is a great collector of negative and positive ions. The bags stuck together agressively. I found myself fighting magnetically adhering plastic sheet stock to get the bags open, GRRR! This final step of the shopping experience taught me to avoid shopping at places where I must do a self check out. After thinking about this for a few seconds I realized I will not be shopping in too many stores because they are all headed in this direction.

This phenomenon is not new. The first labor intensive vendor switched customers to self checkout many years ago. I recall when my dad drove his car into a service station for gas, he stopped by a pump and waited for the attendant to come to his window. Dad asked him to “fill it up with regular,” or “two dollars worth please.” While Dad sat there, the attendant cleaned his windshield, checked the oil, and filled the tires to a correct pressure. Dad handed him money (credit cards weren’t invented yet) and the attendant would make change and give him a Green stamps. Most gas stations were independently owned and operated businesses. When the oil companies took them over to expand the size of the station by adding more pumps they also reduced the amount of service to zero. Car owners were forced to fill their own cars, and to clean their own windows with station supplied water, brush and paper. Today, I use my phone app to dial in to the station location, the pump number and type of gas. The pump communicates with my phone to charge my card. I still have to open the gas tank, and place the nozzle into the filler tube. Perhaps someday soon an AI robot will do all of this for me.

Endicott Road, Endicott, Washington

I don’t know if I saved enough money shopping at Walmart to make the aggravation I suffered to warrant going back there again. If Walmart goes out of business at this location it won’t be because they didn’t have paying customers, it’ll more likely be because they didn’t have customers who wanted to do their work for them.

By the way Lovely and I both guessed wrong, the total was $301.

Filed under: Biography, economy, Sarcasm | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

A Highly Paid Pickpocket

Posted on 14/04/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Take a good look at this woman. She has her hands in your pocket, and is lifting your wallet and any loose change you may still have.

“During an interview aired on Wednesday’s edition of MSNBC’s “11th Hour,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm responded to a question on whether there is a plan to address energy prices that have started to tick up by stating that “the better choice is to move to electrify transportation, because it is so much cheaper for you” and “moving to clean is moving to energy security and moving to affordability.”

I almost fell off my chair. I just Googled Biden’s electrification of transportation plan and learned that he is pouring money into electric charging station infrastructure. Will it be enough? Probably not for a very long time. His desire is to have 500,000 charging stations in place by 2030. The latest stat I found on the number of gas stations in the United States is 115,400. At first the number of charging stations sounds like it will be plenty, but I don’t think so. Most of the 115,400 stations provide up to twelve or more fueling points. It takes me about five minutes to fill my tank while a fast charge will take about 45 minutes. That means the electric charging depot will require nine times as many charging points to equal the fill capacity of a regular fueling station. My arithmetic tells me that the number of charging points is only half of what will be required. Another fact of life is that the current grid that supplies us with our spark is not capable of simultaneously charging more than about five cars per city block before it crashes.

At the same time Biden is planning to increase regulation of gasoline to make it more expensive and harder to get. Remember a few weeks ago when I stated that the current car shortage is a government conspiracy to force us into electric cars. Along with that, the pandemic taught us that we don’t need to drive. Anyway, I have veered from my point which is to state that this lady who has her hands in our pockets is a moron. She actually believes she can convince us that going electric overnight will be cheaper for us.

What Ms Granholm has left out of the discussion is where the electricity needed to spark those 500,000 charging stations will come from. Maybe she has a plan to install a huge windmill on the roof of every fossil fuel and atomic power plant across the country to give us a charge. While we hire the Dutch to design and build those windmills for us we will have to rely on something else. Maybe it will be hydro-electric, but wait, didn’t Lake Meade nearly run out of water this last year? Where will we build new hydro-electric plants. Niagara Falls already has a power plant. Actually, a better idea will be to buy all the old bicycles that the Chinese are no longer using, and we can use them to move around. Not only would that be clean green energy, but we would all lose weight and be healthier. Think of all the reduced health care costs that would accrue. Surplus doctors and nurses would need to be directed to keeping the millions of illegal aliens that have descended upon the USA healthy. The downside of healthy immigrants is that they will be buying up all the beautifully efficient gas powered cars that we had to give up for the electrics.

The bottom line is that we need more power pants

Jennifer Granholm’s stupid answer was completely political talking points. She did it so robotically, and kept repeating the exact same line so many times that I wondered if maybe she is a government robot with limited artificial intelligence.

Here is my tip to Joe Biden, “we are not stupid.”

Filed under: Conservative, economy, Government, Sarcasm | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Time For Another Memorial

Posted on 01/01/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and it is time to set some new goals. Number one on the list is to create a memorial for my second wife Peggy. It is time that the world learns about how beautiful she was. I can’t promise that it will be today, or tomorrow, but it will take place this winter.

Second on my list is to finish the workshop of my dreams.

Third is to design a new Intarsia pattern and to execute the work for display.

Fourth is to fill my garden with Whirligigs all happily spinning away in unison.

Fifth is to retire from retirement from the Frankfort Lions Club

Sixth is to love my family as much as I can.

Seventh is to beat the squirrel

Eighth is to blow up the Apple facility responsible for scrambling the contents of my iMac with their endless need for passwords and updates trying to make my desktop into an iPhone

Lastly, eight goals as lofty as those listed are enough for any man my age.

Memorialize Peggy
Retire from Retirement Lions
What happens to Apple the next time they revise my iMac!
Love my Family
New Intarsia
BEAT THE SQUIRREL
Finsish Shop of my Dreams
Fill the yard with spinning wings
Dream about Apple’s Next revision backing up!

Happy New Year 2023!!!!

Filed under: Biography, Humor, Motivation, Sarcasm | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

A Mystery to Me

Posted on 29/04/2022 by Grumpa Joe

The huge shortage of new cars continues to baffle me. I have read many articles and listened to some videos explaining the shortage of computer chips that is the root cause. I just don’t buy the story. To me, this is a fake news story that is bigger than any used to bring down President Trump. In the mean time, people continue to drive old cars, or buy used ones at prices that the new ones brought two years ago. The fleet grows older as the shortage continues. My own car just turned 177,000 miles and celebrated it’s sixteenth birthday. I have friends who insist that my car is young and brag that their car has close to three hundred thousand miles. I will agree that the quality and reliability of modern cars has improved exponentially with the advent of electronic ignition, fuel injection, and CNC machines that can control metal part tolerances to four digits. Assembly has tightened gap tolerances with the assistance of computer controlled robots, and dipping car frames in electrostatic baths before applying primer and paint with robots that never get bored with monotonous spray patterns to give each car the same coverage. Yes, all of these wonderful technologies use computer chips in their controllers, and the cars use many computer chips to eliminate troublesome mechanical switches throughout. I understand all of that. I can even believe that the modern car has as many as forty chips deployed throughout. What I don’t believe is that modern car companies didn’t see the shortage coming. I also, don’t believe the chip manufacturers are out of capacity to make chips. Both car companies and chip producers have been in business for a long time. They couldn’t possibly have lost their ability to forecast demand. I can believe they might be a few percentage points off of a forecast, but not so far off that their businesses are in jeopardy.

Making a computer chip takes smarts, most of which comes from people in the USA, but the manufacturing cost is high and the result is that chip makers farm the manufacturing to cheap labor countries like China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and the Philippines. By transferring the making to those countries they get chips at a lower cost and make more money. The problem is that when a pandemic hits the labor pool those companies sink. I truly believe COVID had some effect on chip production, but not all.

I tend to be an aficionado of conspiracy theories, and have dreamt up a new one to chew on. What if the Green New Movement is in bed with all the car companies of the world? What if these car companies have pledged their allegiance to the Greenies to halt standard car production in favor of electric cars. How will they deal with the huge fleet of modern gas consuming vehicles in the WW fleet? As it turns out the chip shortage has been a great excuse for not making new cars while the older ones keep on ticking. That gives them time to convert manufacturing to all electric cars. I am shocked to learn that Cadillac, a division of General Motors is switching to all electric cars by 2025. The list doesn’t end with Cadillac. Add the following to the list of Greenies headed toward batteries:

Jaguar, Audi, Alfa Romeo, Rolls Royce, Mini, Volvo, Bentley, Mercedes-Benz, Fiat, Renault, Nissan, Volkswagen, GM, Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota. These companies are committed to selling zero emission vehicles by 2020-2030. Only Toyota who has been selling the Prius since the 1990’s has a delayed date of 2050. Hmmm. Maybe Toyota knows something the rest of them don’t. Toyota is also betting on hydrogen powered cars over electric.

All the facts support my theory of a conspiracy to save the world by forcing electric cars down our throats.

I have but one more question: what happens if after the entire world is solar, wind, battery, and hydrogen powered, and that includes, cars, trucks, trains, planes, and ocean going ships, and Antarctica melts anyway? Do we really want to waste our energy (pun intended) in trashing fossil fuels?

Filed under: family, Government, Manufacturing, Sarcasm | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Honda Falls Short

Posted on 04/02/2022 by Grumpa Joe

For the last three years I have tried in vain to sell my Honda snow blower at our yearly neighborhood garage sale. I did all but say take it away free. No one is interested in a snow blower in July. As luck would have it, I had to use the damn thing each year. This week was a great workout for me and the machine. During moments of an intense use of expletives during the job, I decided to write a little story about Mr. Honda and his machine.

I inherited the machine from my son when he moved to Texas. Up to that time I used a fairly reliable Toro machine. When the Honda became available I jumped at the chance to own it. By then the machine was clearly four or five years old, but it was a Honda, who can argue that it wasn’t the smart thing to do.

I have owned the thing since Mike left which is now ten years, add to that the five years he owned it and the machine has a few hours on it. Some years it stays idle because the snow is easier to shovel than to blow. This machine is bigger, wider, heavier, and has more horsepower than the Toro. Because it is heavier it is harder to handle. The engine is superb, starting on one or two pulls at the most. I have had to use the electric start feature only a few times over the years mostly because I left the gas in the tank over the summer and it gunked up the spark plug. Otherwise the engine is fine, it runs like a champ, and has power to spare. So why am I writing an article about what I don’t like about it. Because as a snow thrower it stinks for several reasons:

1.) The throat of the spout plugs easily because of the shitty transition between the impeller and the exhaust chute. When it plugs and is no longer throwing the snow, I am pushing it in front of the impeller. Pushing a huge wad of snow is a workout I can do with out, and would rather push that same wad with a simple shovel thus saving the world from global warming by reducing my carbon footprint. To clear the plug I must bounce the machine by moving the handle up and down vigorously thus further causing the frame to bend and the scraper to wear.

2. The frame supporting the impeller is flimsy and has twisted out of place from repeated impacts against frozen water to clear snow. The twisted frame has caused the plastic scraper that meets the concrete to wear prematurely thus causing two problems:

A.) The machine is harder than hell to push because the scraper is mis-aligned and dragging hard against the pavement. One should not have to “push” a snow blower, it should propel itself.

B.) That mis-alignment causes the scraper to wear unevenly, and in short time the steel frame has worn away on one side. Steel on concrete causes it to be harder to push. Over the years the worn edge holding the scraper has also worn down to the point where I can’t replace the plastic scraper anymore.

This all sounds too complicated even to me to be worth writing so many words about when shitty design is just as good way to describe the situation.

Honda would have been much better served by saving it’s fine engine for use in a scooter or some other vehicle rather than in this shit pile of steel and plastic it calls a snow blower. The problem is that at this stage in life I don’t want to waste my fixed income on a new snow blower, and it make sense to keep it. I am asking that the damn thing be parked along side my casket with a sign saying “free.” If no one takes it then I ask that it be dumped on top of my casket before they pile the dirt on.

Filed under: Biography, Sarcasm | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

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