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PAUL L. MCCORD JR. | K5GLH – OKLAHOMA CITY

paulmccord.net - PAUL L. MCCORD JR. | K5GLH – OKLAHOMA CITY

Monthly Archives: December 2009

Never Reboot While Blogging

I had a blog post typed up and was within a sentence or two of being ready to post when I decided to click “YES” on a request to reboot to complete a security update installation.  Wow!  That was not very smart because just as you probably guessed, the post was lost.  This should be common sense and I must be lacking any. :)   Well to sum up the post that was lost, it was just a year in review post.  I was telling how 2009 was a year of milestones in our family.  Many things happened that made it a very memorable year.  For example my wife and I celebrated our 20th anniversary.  I graduate the University of Oklahoma.  I completed ten years of service at my current employer.  My oldest son turned 18 years old. My family and I was able to visit my mom’s side of the family in New Mexico for the first time since 1989.  My wife and kids had never met them and so this was a huge moment for us.  I lost my mom in 2005 and as much as I miss her, I do not want to lose touch with her side of the family.  Also my sister moved back to Oklahoma for the first time in 31 years.  This was a rough transition but things are going very well for her as well.  On a sad note, I lost my grandmother in March when she died at 90 years old.  This was the last grandparent that I had.

Two of these events, namely my graduation and our trip to New Mexico was a little tainted because I was suffering from the worst case of poison ivy that I have ever had.  I helped my dad clean up some vines and brush that was growing on his fence line and three days later I found myself itching out of control.  Five weeks, three trips to my doctor and one visit to the emergency room later and I finally overcame this breakout.  My doctor gave me some medication that I was allergic to that made it even worse eventually resulting in my going to the emergency room in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  This was in May and June when this happened and to this day I still have some discoloration on my legs.  For this reason my wife ordered me to never go into my dad’s backyard again :) .  My graduation was supposed to be a glorious event though I could not enjoy it at the moment.

The National Weather Service reported that we had 14.1 inches of snow, later revised to 13.5 inches on Christmas eve.  Even after the estimated snow fall was scaled back it was the most snow we have ever recorded in Oklahoma City.  Here it is eight days later and we still have some snow on the ground.  This year has been very eventful and happy for the most part.  This year we have decided that we want to move away from my childhood neighborhood because the crime has reached a point that we want to have a restart.  We will not be moving until 2011 but we are currently restoring the house to make it sellable.  We are trying to go the extra mile so that we can get the most from our home when the time comes.    We are hopeful for 2010 to be a wonderful year for our family.  It will be difficult to match 2009 as far as impacting our family in a dramatic way.  I will keep you up to date and see if it lives up to the previous year.   I would like to thank all of  you for your making my blog a place to stop.  I really enjoy sharing our lives with the rest of you.  I wish you all a very happy 2010.

Love For Limbaugh

On this December 30th, 2009 Rush Limbaugh was taken to a hospital in Honolulu for chest pains.  I discovered this on Twitter as I discover many things.  Many times I hear people that are politically left of center refer to Conservatives as being bigots and filled with hate.  This coming from the people that are concerned for the welfare of the ‘little guy’.  They profess themselves to be the solution to all the hatred coming from those that are on the right.  Strangely enough, on this night as Rush Limbaugh suffers in the hospital these same people are professing their hatred and hopes of bad things to happen to Rush.  Their compassion is akin to that of Adolph Hitler.  Below are a few of the comments that I found on Twitter that are representative of their love and compassion.  Just a note of caution, some of these posts are inappropriate.

Twitter Douchebag Alert: RT @amazingatheist: Ruch Limbaugh hospitalized with chest pains. Let’s all hope he dies.

RT @owillis: wait, is rush limbaugh dead? Not dead enough

Rush Limbaugh on Death Bed? Taken to Hospital in Hawaii: Would we really miss this fat, sloppy racist, pill popping…

Rush Limbaugh is a prodigious waste of food and I will be happy when he dies. There, I said it. #tcot #p2

Dufus @JenJen_623 What the f**k do you expect? Rush Limbaugh is evil

There are so many others that are even worse but you get the picture.  This does not surprise me because I have dealt with their compassion for a long time.  I think you can disagree with someone without wishing death upon them.  I do believe you can have crazies on both sides but the sheer number of these posts are truly sad.  Rush Limbaugh as of the time of this posting is listed as the second most commented words used on Twitter at the moment.  Literally thousands if not millions of these are being posted online.

I think that despite your political slant, this type of behavior is completely inappropriate.  I do remember seeing similar posts when Ted Kennedy died.  I will be honest, as a Conservative, I strongly disagreed with his policies.  I do not agree with wishing death upon him or anyone else.  I would hope that people will come to their senses and not be so hostile to the point of wishing death upon people.  For those of you that can actually disagree with someone without hating them, I would like to thank you.  It is hard for me to imagine the mindset that you must hate someone that disagrees with you.  If I were to take that attitude I would hate half of my own family.  People come from different backgrounds and see the world differently. One person may see something as being unjust and feel strongly that something is wrong.  This person may perceive this action as being unfair when the so called perpetrator had no malice whatsoever.

For this reason I believe that it is okay to have a difference of opinion.  We can agree to disagree and still maintain a relationship.  Can you imagine having such strong feelings about something  that you would be willing to throw away a relationship with your own family?  If the offense is something that I just cannot get past, I would at least try to be civil and avoid those topics to the best of my ability.  I have met some people that just cannot let things go and desire to argue.  In those cases all you can do is agree to disagree and refuse to discuss these issues.

The idea that people would disagree with someone so strongly that they would wish death on someone really saddens me.  If I ever get this way, I would hope that my loved ones would bring this to my attention so I can wake up.

Christmas Eve Snowstorm

Christmas Eve Snow 2009

Wow!  We often complain about never having snow here in Oklahoma City.  Most of the time if we do have winter weather, it ends up being sleet or freezing rain.  Yesterday it was a nice 65 degrees and we were really enjoying it.  This morning I woke up at 6:00 AM and it was raining.  By 7:15 it had turned to sleet.  The sleet fell for nearly four hours before turning to snow.  By noon the National Weather Service had issued a blizzard warning for most of Oklahoma including Oklahoma City.  In my 43 years I cannot remember ever having a blizzard warning here.  The picture above shows looking behind my house toward the North.  The picture below shows a view looking across the street.  I was having a difficult time taking this picture because I the snow was blowing in my face even though the wind was from behind the house and I was on the front porch.

Christmas Eve Snow 2009

To be honest, I was very skeptical of this being much of a winter weather event because we have been promised these storms before and ended up with rain.  When these pictures were taken, the wind was blowing 50+ miles per hour (MPH).  Although we received 14.1 inches of snow, the drifts were pretty high.  We had to shovel a huge drift from behind the car just so we could back out of the drive way to pick up my son from work.

The good thing about this snow is that tomorrow is Christmas and we have not had a white Christmas in 20 years.  As of the time I am posting this, it is still snowing pretty hard.  The radar shows that it is almost over.  It looks like the snow will not last more than a couple more hours.  Tomorrow should be a nice clear day for Christmas although we will have a nice snow covered day.  While it is nice to have the snow, I have been watching the weather coverage all day and it has been telling us about one car accident in Midwest City that involved 50 cars.  Another accident in El Reno involved 20+ cars.  I know there have been many others but these two are the ones that really stood out to me.  Let’s hope no one was seriously injured.  It would be tragic for someone to have injuries on Christmas eve.  I did drive to the store just outside my residential area about an hour ago and it was tough but manageable.  As long as  you don’t stop in a deep snow drift you are okay.  We had to help push another car so they could get moving.

For us, it has been a nice day.  Our white Christmas is a welcome site and we are happy to see it despite having nearly zero visibility.

Blackberry Outage

This evening I had some family from out of town visiting.  I took some pictures with my Blackberry with the intention of uploading them onto Facebook.  After about 10 attempts I became frustrated.  I could not understand why I could not upload even through my dad’s wifi.  Here it is about four hours later and I still cannot upload or for that matter use any data on my phone.  Around 11:00 PM I was reading Twitter and discovered that one of the trending topics was Blackberry.  I clicked on it and found that millions of people were posting about their Blackberry service not working.  These were people of differing service providers.  Then I found that people were posting stories from major news outlets advising us that Blackberry service is experiencing an outage in North and South America.  We can make phone calls and text messages but no data can be used.  I have many applications and none of them are working.

I am actually happy the problem is on the provider’s end and not on my own.  At least this gives me the confidence of knowing that it is not my equipment that is malfunctioning.  I truly have been very happy with my service over time.  I love being able to Twitter, Facebook, and listen to the Internet radio on my phone.  I guess I can give them the benefit of the doubt and give them a second chance. :) Hopefully it will be working by the time morning arrives.  If you have a Blackberry and your service is not working then you can put your mind at ease and know the problem is not on your end.

***UPDATE 12/23/2009***

It appears the service is back online this morning. I had about 20 emails, 20 text messages and a few Twitter messages all waiting on my phone this morning when I got up.

Am I Upset About Healthcare?

No I am not.  I expected nothing less from these left wing, integrity challenged people in Washington. Since it is clear that I do not like them,  you may be asking yourself why I am not upset.  The reason is that if the people had not voted for the most liberal Congress and President in history, there would not be an issue.  The American people made their bed and now they can sleep in it.  The writing is on the wall about how this is going to end up.  Anyone who  has been awake over the last decade can see it.  The Republicans that also do not represent their constituency will win the 2010 election in a land slide vote.  The American people will hear a barrage of news stories about how the Republicans are out to throw grandma out on the street while enriching their wealthy buddies for the next two years.  The American people in their ignorance will swallow the whole pill and re-elect Obama for a second term.

It is sad how people have become so loyal to their party that we never get anyone in office with integrity.  People will vote for their party just to keep the other side out of office and before you know it, both parties are exactly the same.  That is what is happening and has been happening for some time.  The media will portray the Republicans in a way that is completely false.  If they portrayed them accurately, then they would show you that the Republicans and Democrats are exactly alike.

So the answer is no I am not upset but rather I expect everything I get out of Washington.  The Republicans, I mean Democrats nominated the left wing John McCain, assuring that Obama would win the presidency.  Until both parties close the door on the opposing party being allowed to vote in their primary elections, then this sort of thing will continue.  You have the liberal people on the coasts voting in the Republican primary picking the candidate that no conservative would ever vote for.  They not only need to close the primaries to only the party being voted for but they need to make it where once you vote in a primary, you cannot change your party affiliation on the general election once you have voted in the primary.  In other words, if you are a Democrat trying to subvert the election by voting in the Republican party primary then you must vote Republican in the general election.

That is how John McCain was elected in the first place.  No conservative in his or her right mind would ever vote for John McCain.  When you add to this that the American people are ignorant and do not have a clue what their candidate stands for, you pretty much expect to have corruption. The very people that cry voter fraud when they lose an election are the ones that cry foul when an attempt is made to enforce that a photo identification be required to vote.  I would suggest it go even further.  I think that if you cannot pass a basic Constitution test you should not be allowed to vote.  If the people do not have enough initiative to learn the basics of what our country was founded upon then I think they should forfeit their opportunity to vote.  The ignorant Americans will listen to the national media and allow felons to vote because they have so much integrity.

Don’t ask my opinion on healthcare because I have no respect for either of the parties.  Ultimately I place the blame on a lazy population that will not educate themselves and will take opinion of a non objective media.  The way I see it, you can have healthcare because you voted for them.

Home Owners Associations

My wife and I have been looking at homes for a while because we plan on moving in about a year.  One thing I struggle with is the existence of home owners associations.  These associations are a real turn off to me because I do not want some third party telling me how to take care of my home.  The way I see it is that I am the one paying for my house and I really do not think a bunch of snooty people with their noses in the air should have any say whatsoever on how I maintain my home.  I mean, if I choose to sit a 1972 motor home in my front lawn on blocks with no wheels then it is no one else’s business.  I would not do this but I say it to illustrate the idiocy of these associations.

I really believe that being forced to join a home owners association is a deal breaker for me.  I have had people tell me the virtues of such organizations like ensuring the value of the properties in the neighborhood.  My answer to that is to move out to the country if you are so concerned about what your neighbors are doing.  As if it is not bad enough having someone telling you how to live your life, they want to charge you for it.  There is something fundamentally wrong about this whole concept.  The notion of doing things for the good of the group is ‘hogwash’.  When the group begins to pay for my mortgage then they can tell me what to do on my own property.  For those of you that like these groups then all I can say is “I feel sorry for you”.

I believe that people need to be more concerned about what goes on at their own homes before worrying about mine.  Just in case my feelings were unclear, I would like to clarify that I think home owners associations are nothing more than a group of “busy bodies” sticking their noses in other people’s business.  People often tell me not to hold back on my feelings :) .  Thanks for checking in and sorry for the harshness if you are a home owners association advocate.  I just think we will have to agree to disagree on this topic.

Comment Troubles

For those of you that have been trying to comment on this blog and have been unable I can tell you that I had a problem.  I have been so busy with life that I did not even notice that I had a malfunctioning WordPress plug-in.  I had a Google Friend connect plug-in that was activated and was not installed correctly.  Without my knowledge not only were all comments hidden but no one was able to post any new comments.  I repaired the problem so that comments are now authorized.  I made a point to use the Disqus blog commenting system because it shares the comments on my Friendfeed and Facebook feed.  This way these comments can be commented on from other sources.  It sort of gives a social network feel to this blog.

I just wanted to apologize to anyone that has tried to post a comment on this blog over the last couple months.  I was not trying to prevent anyone from responding to one of my posts.  As much as I like to keep this site up and running, I often get busy and forget to check in.  I appreciate your patience with my lack of maintenance.

Gangland in Oklahoma City

Gangland: Crazy Killers (Latino Gang In Oklahoma City, OK) [44 Minutes]

You may remember a post back in January when I took many gang graffiti pictures around South Oklahoma City.  This post had become a hostile place for rivals to post their hatred toward one another.  It got so bad that I had to disable the post.  At that time, I never realized that we had much of a problem other than the graffiti.  This week, the History Channel’s Gangland profiled a local gang, the South Side Locos and their hatred for another gang, Grande Barrio Centrals (GBC).  The above video is that program that was on television.  I know that many times the media tends to exaggerate things and that may be the case here as well.  I do however remember a couple of the events in this video happening.  We often hear about a shooting on the South side on the news but when it is reported on TV we never hear what it was about.  Most people ignore it because there are always going to be shootings on the news.

I was surprised to see this video on a national network.  For one thing, I never thought it was that bad around here.  Another thing is that I am not sure how wise it is to give them coverage on a national stage.  It is hard to imagine what positive things could come from this type of exposure.  In my opinion, this exposure can do nothing more than inflame the situation.  In the entire story, they consistently put down this GBC gang.  Although I am not really familiar with either of them, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand that the GBC’s are likely going to be offended by this program resulting in even more violence.  On another front, I am not too sure that any city chamber of commerce wants this kind of publicity.  When you have your city profiled on a national network for gang activity, it turns potential new residences away.  I mean, people that just want to live in peace are not likely to want to move to a place that is on national TV for gang violence.

Although I do think this program does exaggerate the situation to some degree, there is no denying their is a gang issue on the South side.  If you drive anywhere from I-35 West to May Avenue, and between 15th down to 59th, the graffiti is very prominent.  I have seen entire buildings that are painted over from the ground to the roof as displayed in the photo below.

OKC Southside Grafiti

In the picture above you can see on the bottom right where someone has posted LK for Loco Killer.  Someone quickly changed the L to a C for Central Killer.  These two gangs are talked about in the video above.  These two gangs are not the only ones in the area but they are the ones that are profiled in this program.  The photo above is just one small example of the tagging that has taken over the South side.  It is sad to see the constant vandalism that has taken over this area.  I have always seen small areas of graffiti around but it was quickly covered up.  It is so bad lately that it would take thousands of dollars just to cover up what is already there.  I have always been proud of my home town but this is the sort of thing that no one wants for their town.

One of the sad things about all this is that I have actually heard people defend the vandalism by calling it art.  It is not art when they are destroying other people’s property.  If they want to paint up their own house then so be it but leave other people’s property alone.  I first read about this story on the OKCTalk web site.  They were posting about the show being on at the moment but I missed it.  I found it on the Internet and thought I would post it here.

Hopefully in my idealist world, the people will see this and take a stand to clean up the problems.  Unfortunately it will likely result in more hostility between two groups that are being ‘dissed’ on national TV.  That is likely going to be the end result of this program’s airing.  It will make them even more emboldened where the tax payers are less safe and end up being stuck paying to repair all the damages.  I hate to be so cynical but the media coverage paints a rosy picture as though there is nothing wrong.  Our local media does not even know their is a South side.  One thing that I have noticed about this city is the enormous blinders that are on.  Our city has a North side that tends to reap most of the financial benefits that come with having one of the lowest unemployment numbers in the nation.  There are lots of great stories about how our economy has faired well in this downturn.  I have met people on the North side that have not been to the South side in 20 years.  They have lived here their whole lives and do not even know where some of the main streets go through.  It is this vacuum of knowledge about what is going on around them that keeps these problems out of the media.

The local media is almost exclusively comprised of North side residence.  I work with people that live on the North side that do not even know about the things that go on in the South side.  I do hold a little hope that having a national television exposure will wake up those in our local media so that the tax payers will know what is going on.  I sometimes think it is sort of like that awkwardness that people experience when they are at a red light and there is a homeless person standing there holding a sign.  It is too easy to stare straight ahead and pretend he is not there.  It is easy for our locals to pretend our problems are not there and ignore it because they live in their expensive home on the North side.  We do not want these types of stories getting national attention because it only exacerbates the problems.  I still love my home town and hope to see it retain its family values roots.  I do not want to see it become a den of crime to a point that no one wants to live here.

I Miss Colors

Ray Trent Park

As much as I love my hometown, there is one thing that it really lacks in the winter time and that is color.  As the photo above is in black and white, it is representative of some of the days we have in the winter.  This is Ray Trent park in Del City on a cold winter day with no leaves on the trees and a slight fog on a cloudy day.

Colors of OKC

Fortunately our winters are not too long and our wonderful colors return.  What brings this on is an unusual cold snap that we had this past week as did most of the rest of the nation.  We had temperatures that hovered around 10 degrees.  We went nearly a whole week where the temperature never climbed above freezing.  The colorful flowers were taken at the Myriad Gardens in Oklahoma City during the autumn transition.

I love taking pictures whenever I can but lately I have been so busy with work, family, and trying to fix things around the house.  We are looking to move in the next year so we are trying to get the house sellable.  This means taking my tower down and getting rid of it.  Though it is a bit sad to part with my ham radio tower, it will also give me some peace during storm season.  Every time we have lightning nearby, I cringe because one strike to my tower could burn the house down.  This is ironic because I love severe weather other than that.  People often say “just disconnect the cables” but if they only knew how many cables and how they were routed through the wall.  Well now they are removed and the tower is next after Christmas.

I can hardly wait until I have some time to go take some more pictures because it is enjoyable and I love to be able to share them on Flickr. By the time Spring comes around we will see a lot of colors with trees and flowers blooming.  I love to get out and take pictures then.  There is something psychological about the Spring time.  It is almost as if there is life for everyone to experience.  The birds singing, the flowers blooming, and it even smells fresh.  I love it and sure miss it when we have weeks like this.  I should be grateful because we use to live at Eielson AFB near Fairbanks, Alaska.  When we lived there, I could barely stand it when March would arrive and it would still be –15 degrees.  We are very fortunate to be able to experience all four seasons here.  It does seem that Winter is going to be colder this year since it is still not winter and we have already been as low as 10 degrees.  At least the cold will kill many of the insects and maybe next summer will not be as bad with fleas and ticks.  It has been a long time since we have had a real cold winter so I guess we are due for one.  Another good thing about having a cold winter is that spring is that much more pleasant after one.  I hope you all have a nice CHRISTtmas.    Thanks for stopping by.

Soundtrak is Back!

Those of you that have lived in Oklahoma City for many years may remember in the 1970’s we had an electronics store called Sountrak.  This store would advertise with a woman conveniently named Linda Soundtrak.  They closed down their store decades ago and now they are back.  Above is one of their new commercials.  I remember watching these when I was a kid so I was surprised to see them on again.