travel

35 Dollar Gift Card

I had 35 dollars in a gift card. I love seeing how far I can stretch it. In school groups I am usually the chair/president or the treasurer because and I quote.

“T can take a dollar, stretch it to five quarters and if he is really cooking still have change left over.”

35 dollar gift card got me the following. Six muffins, a loaf of good dark wheat bread, A pound of chopped farm raised pork, three energy drinks, two 2-liter bottles of cherry coke zero, a can of spaghetti sauce and a chicken cordon bleu wrap. Oh and a 20 oz sprite and a bottle of pumpkin apple cider.

Not too bad for 35 dollars. When putting everything through the checkout I had saved 12.55 from coupons and shopping deals. Nearly getting fifty dollars of stuff on a 35 dollar gift card is always nice. Around here a couple students have taken to asking me what deals I know of, because whether its go puff, or amazon delivery, door dash, I look up deals just to stay knowledgeable it sounds strange but sometimes you will find a store on door dash, like now that will do 30% off on 70 dollars, and while you would think it is really bad, the prices are generally similar save for a couple items. Ramen is brutal in some of these stores but it was a lot better then it was a few years ago it used to be about .80 for a ramen at these stores and now its .50 . Shouldn’t buy ramen at some stores but you know.

I got some sandwiches out of it, burgers, ( lean burger patties are always cheaper then pounds of beef)

Odd little things like that make my day, especially when I can do it cheaper then before.

Outside of getting my money’s worth, happy holidays, I hope your days are filled with joy.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Tired from DC

Welcome to the nightly ramblings.

I went to Washington DC over the weekend and I felt exhausted returning. Ten hours in a metal tube between going and returning. Now some will say how it was horrible, and if you saw it that way, I didn’t.

Now as much as I bang the drum on Portland and its ills there is something I would like to make clear. Just because I had a good time doesn’t mean there are not things to fix, there are many things to fix in any city and for those mad that newer people don’t see it is easy enough to explain. For me I came form Portland, I know what Portland looks like in good and in bad times, I have that data and those scenes already in my head. If I don’t have one or the other of good or bad I will just likely sign off it is doing fine.

The reason for that is that without knowing both you do not know if it is good or bad. Some people think Portland is great, one person explains it is nothing like Memphis. We are not in Memphis though for our conversation we are in Portland so grading needs to be the right standard.

Also, it angered me immensely that everyone was showing the Portland protests on loop. Washington DC was a place I enjoyed although I must say Portland is my home, and while it is nice to see how other cities work it is nice to go back and try to make something out of the problems that run rampant here.

Now this is more of a check in piece as trying to recover after 60 hours of stuff to do and 10 hours of flying has made me a very exhausted buffalo. I will say I walked for a couple hours and while I did have to pay for it the next day, and I didn’t go very fast it was still more then before so we can still keep moving up on that account.

More tomorrow

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Pet Peeves – Wasting Time in Politics

I do not like wasting time, it is one of those things that just drives at me because no matter what is done that time cannot be gotten back.

Seeing people from the state government try to prop Portland as some no problem paradise just pisses me off. We have crime problems, we have job problems, we have money problems and the most people want to talk about it is saying if you talk bad about Portland you are an evil MAGA.

I am a registered democrat and there are others who see this and look at the lies over the years and for those thinking Antifa is getting cleaner, they did this in 2020 with their free milkshakes and walk with families, they then poisoned a milkshake and turned it into a chemical weapon against Andy Ngo. How do I know?

I was at those protests five years ago, hell, you scour the video you will find me in a white and blue jacket. I was there and have seen the down fall and the same people who say there are no problems are now trying to show nothing is wrong when everything in their paperwork says otherwise. I have seen them try to barricade front doors since 23, the bags of rocks or the hap hazard stacks of bricks during the 2020 riots, the fireworks and items thrown at police, the hiding behind mothers who believed with them. The only thing I say what was wrong was this was something I tried to understand, I tried talking to them, and everything they said was utter trash.

Portland state had their library trashed causing more than a million dollars’ worth of damage in  a series of years where they had their budget shrink and had to make those cuts during more years of budgets shrinking. It is a lot harder to cut a shrinking budget then a growing one. We cannot as a school,(Portland state) as a city (Portland) or as a state (Oregon) be so foolish that we simply not look at out problems, and seeing that so many people want to brush them under the rug is absolutely infuriating because it means that all the good done is essentially wasted.

No program can last without funding, and no funds can be collected without people with jobs, and those jobs do not exist without businesses. Also these failed fact checks like the Oregonian is just a show of stupidity they claim no explosives have ever been used meanwhile there are videos in 2020 and 2021 of explosives being used. Hell, I saw them from a park trying to figure out why people would do this in the city.

I would have no problem if it had some point, but after five years of this, it clearly does not have one, it has been a waste of time and money for everyone in the city and the worst part is it does not even help their own case.

Gaslighting and picking the best times to show video just as a gotcha is the equivalent of someone hiding a broken plate behind their back because they know if caught it will mean they will be punished. Honestly I think we just need a better level of politician not more one way liberal or conservative, just more honest about the situation…

Maybe I need to think about doing something about it.

Stay strong.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Dancing Madness

There is a lot of things to be angry about but Portland is my home, recently we had a large hoopla about the federal troops coming in. Now, unlike what seems the entirety of the vocal political class, instead of getting something done let us take a look at something substantial.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/portlandpolicebureau/viz/DispatchedCallsforService/DispatchedCalls

This is the screen where the data for the Portland police is tallied and this is the response time, and the reason why this is important is for a high priority call the time to get to a call is five minutes. High priority being your rape, murder, someone is getting expressed of the mortal coil or someone is trying to put something in someone.

The lowest time, lowest, was February with fifteen minutes. The highest was September last year with 25, and we don’t have data for September yet this year.

Now, this picture is the front page as of the last day in September, and this is all the reason why Trump can use Title X. for those new here I have been complaining about this for years and pardon me but you can’t beat the classics.

YOU CANNOT CLAIM NOTHING IS WRONG WHEN MORE THEN HALF YOUR CALLS Have A TEN MINUTE RESPONSE!

When your goal is five minutes, and mind you this is just high priority calls. After a year and the best you get is three times your goal, then you are understaffed and we have been. That is one reason for title X. Another is can the city effectively enforce the law. Looking at this, no. Twenty minutes means they cannot effectively enforce the law. All of this is not because Trump thinks Kotex and Portland are crap, these numbers are your problem, and if these get fixed there is no ground for them to say.

Now I have talked about this and people go” Well trump will find another reason”

Listen, I know I can be a bit abrasive. I have the personality of a cactus. When someone does not like you, you do not make their job to ruin your day easier. All of this is within the law, you don’t want feds here, get the house in order which people have been complaining for a long time.

Our mayor decided to dance instead of work on this.

Our city council decided instead of working to appear and use it as a political stunt.

Portland isn’t about finding the next democratic star, it’s about getting work done. If we cannot find people who get work done this time, maybe we need to have different people next time.

Dems are not making themselves loved or even respected and in Portland where one of the most liberal areas in the country stand, we are making sure it will not be standing like it should.

0 CommentsLeave a comment