I'm A Pretty Hot Guy and Here's Why

          My Wednesday theme usually deals with people--interviews and people features--and like I've done the past couple of weeks I'm going to talk some more about me.  Let's face it--I'm a hot guy. I'm not bragging to get you ladies all worked up or anything like that.  It's just that I'm hot.  And today I'm going to tell you why I'm so hot.

It's all the hot and spicy food I like to eat!!!!

         At my age I should be careful--my stomach just doesn't handle the spicy foods like it used to.  My wife warns me about it all the time and worries when she sees me at Sutha Thai Restaurant in Downey with my hair (what little I have left) drenched as sweat pours from my head and runs down the back of my neck, and  my face and ears turn a bright shade of red.  I love it, but I pay later.  The old stomach just doesn't handle the hot stuff like it used to but I can't give it up either.

         But now to get to the real point of today's post.  You see I'm not a horticulturist, or a gardener, or a farmer, or anything like that, so I was hoping that someone out there might be able to tell me what we've got growing in our backyard.  This is a plant that is dear to my heart--it's like my child.  It is a hot pepper, I do know that because I risked my life eating one. Why it could have been a berry of instantaneous death or something horrible, but it was just hot.  It was kind of good, but it was hot.  My question now is what kind of pepper is it?

        First, let me give you the history of this pepper plant.  That's not it to the left, but this is where I originally had it before I had to move it to the back yard.  When we first moved here this little square of soil was planted with some kind of ground cover plant--don't know what it was, it was just put there by the original landscapers.  Well, this groundcover all died and the spot turned into just some dirt and a few weeds.  Then one day I saw this tiny little plant that looked greener, shinier, and healthier than anything else. It was growing over to the left up against the pavement of the driveway.  It struck me that there was something special about this plant and I took a liking to it.  So I dug up everything else in this plot of earth, moved my new little plant to the center, and covered the rest of the plot with green colored gravel.  The little plant began to flourish.  This was in spring of 2005.

           To spruce up the decor of the front yard I bought these little kids in a swing over at WalMart and placed it behind the plant so it looked like they were looking at the pretty little green plant.  Eventually the plant grew taller so  I moved the kids in front of the plant so it looked like a tree growing behind them. The plant continued to grow with branches extending to the driveway and the entranceway to our front door. My wife said it needed to be moved and I knew that she was right. In late summer of 2006 I dug the plant up and moved it to our back yard.

         

          When we first moved into our house in 1997 there was nothing in the back yard but a bunch of dirt which eventually began sprouting a healthy crop of weeds.  I quickly decided that this would not do and decided to start a small farm in my back yard.  Now as I have said I am no farmer and my crop was basically a fiasco.  I did manage a fair amount of very strange-looking skinny cucumbers which I dined on nearly nightly in the summer of 1999, but everything else did not produce and died.  Soon after that I came to the conclusion that this is Los Angeles and no place for a farm, so we covered the backyard with concrete except for a small strip against the back wall that was left in case anyone ever wanted to plant something.

        In June of 2005, my sister Joni was visiting and decided to replant some little houseplants that my wife had received as a gift.  They were going to die anyway so Joni replanted them in our little strip of land and they actually survived.  That's where I replanted my plant-child from the front yard-- right in the center of the strip between the other transplants.  However, my replant began to wilt and lost its leaves.  I figured the shock of the transplant was too much and the plant had died.  I left the barren skeleton to stand through winter.

         In Spring of 2007 I began to see tiny sprouts of green appear on the branches.  Then after the leaves had appeared, tiny white flowers began to blossom.  I was thrilled.  What is this plant?  I wondered. Then in midsummer I was amazed to see the tiny red orbs appear where the blossoms had been.  The plant was strong and healthy and growing bigger by the day.  At our annual family Fourth of July party at our house in 2008, my nephew-in-law tasted one.  I was afraid, but he assured me it was just a hot pepper.  I tried one.  It was a hot pepper, a very hot pepper, but a tasty hot pepper.  The plant had hundreds of them.  I began using them in cooking occasionally, but they were very hot so I didn't use them often.  To the above right is what the plant looks like now.  It's difficult to tell by the picture but it's about 6 feet tall.

 

   

      

         Since 2007 two more of these have sprouted in the ground nearby.   I transplanted them so they would be evenly spaced in the earthen strip along the wall.  So far they both seem to be doing well and are sprouting peppers of their own.  You can see the two offspring to the left.  The one top is the newest and it stands about 18 inches tall.  The one below is a couple of years old and is nearly 3 feet tall.

           At the bottom of the page are close-ups of the peppers and the leaves.  I am hoping that someone who knows peppers can identify them for me.  They are hotter than jalapenos, but maybe less hot than a habanero.  In the past I have tasted some that reminded me of the flavor of peppers that are used to make Tabasco sauce.  Although today when I tasted one it almost had the flavor of a bell pepper, albeit an extremely hot one.     

          If any body knows what these are please let me know.  Any suggestions on how I could use them?  If anyone lives near Pico Rivera you're welcome to have some cause I haven't been eating them.  They're too hot and I'm hot enough from all the other hot stuff I eat.

And Now For A Really Sticky Topic...

        No, it's not Debate Day.  On Tossing It Out Debate Day is on Thursday--that's when I sometimes bring up some really sticky topics.  Today I have a sticky topic of a different nature.  However, let me preface by noting that if all levels and offices of federal, state, and local governments in the United States were businesses most of them would have gone under years ago. If government were actually operated like a business things would be a lot different.

        On Tuesdays I often do reviews, so today I'd like to offer an extremely superficial review of government offices in the United States.  Now I know I have some readers who work for some kind of governmental office and I'm sure this is not directed toward you because any reader of this blog could only be a high quality individual with  good ethics and work habits.  This rant review is directed toward those government workers who would be too ignorant to read a blog or just don't care about the quality of their work.  This is the anti-paean to the slovenly workers who suck up the hard-earned money you and I pay in taxes.

          This will not even touch those members of the executive, legislative, and judicial branch of the government who are supposed to be serving us.  That's a whole different topic.  And this certainly doesn't include any of our terrific military personnel who do such a great job keeping this country safe.  I'm just talking about the regular employed workers out there who are supposedly providing a service but are doing it poorly.  So before I begin let me apologize to all you good, honest, caring workers (you know who you are) and say this is not about you, but it's about some of your co-workers (you probably know who they are) and some of the incompetent decision-makers on the upper levels. 

        As an aside I should say I've gotten way off track from the topic  I was planning on talking about today, but it can wait.  What first inspired the direction of todays off-the-track post was an experience in the Post Office last week.  I was going to buy some stamps and I was mislead-- or perhaps just misinformed.  Whatever it was it was wrong. 

        When I buy stamps, I just buy one "book" at a time.  It's not really a "book" it's a small card of stamps. Since I buy in small quantities I always request the commemeratives (the pretty stamps).  On this visit the employee at the counter convinced me that I should buy the "Forever Stamps" (the ones that are good for any price hike in the future) because the prices were going to go up soon.  I took the bait and bought the "Forevers".  I have dealt with this lady at the Post Office before and she seems like a nice enough person so I trusted her.   What I forgot to ask was how much of an increase there was going to be.

      Later, I went to the United States Postal Service website to get info about the increase but there was nothing about any increase of first class letter rates.  I called the 800 number--they said there would be no increase this year.  Who do I believe?  The lady at the Post Office had a whole story--a sales pitch--complete with a poster of upcoming stamps and how they weren't keeping many 44 cent stamps in their inventory because the new stamps would be coming soon.  Now I'll be having the Liberty Bell on all of my outgoing mail for the next few weeks when I could have had the Simpsons and Chinese New Year.  I love the Liberty Bell and all, but on every darn letter?

     And this right after a couple of unpleasant visits to the California Department of Motor Vehicles.  I'm sure we all have unpleasant DMV stories no matter what state we're in, but in California we have the added unpleasantness of the employee furlough days so the incompetent California government can save money to pay for the legislators.  At the rate they are handing out drivers licenses to illegals they should just give all of us legal folks a license that will last us the rest of our lives so we don't have to deal with the DMV anymore. And don't even bring the Smog Testing scam--I'm sure Al Gore loves this one.  The next scam the CA thieves of government want to impose is tire inflation testing -- I can hardly wait.  Instead of worrying about the air in our tires, they should be worrying about the hot air in the windbags in Sacramento who are trying to run our lives.

      But the actual thing that really ticked me off was a recent report that baggage loss for air travelers had gone down due to increased scrutiny of all baggage handlers.  The airline employees were responsible for some losses, but the biggest concern had been theft by employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).   Excuse me?   Am I missing something here?  The folks that are supposed to be providing security to us fliers may be possibly stealing things out of our suitcases.   What kind of security is that?  If a TSA employee can take things out of our suitcases can't they put a bomb in one if they want to?  Here we are lined up like cattle getting thoroughly examined like criminals and some Somalian with known terrorist ties merrily hops on board with a bomb in his underpants.  It just makes me wonder if the TSA is screening the right people.

          Now please don't get me wrong.  I love my country and the United States government does many things efficiently.  I seem to get all of my mail in a timely manner and the roads are better here than they are in a lot of places.  I've never personally had to grease the palm of any public official although I'm sure some of that is being done at some level and probably mostly by corporations and lobbyists.  I've got my power, water, and televison so I guess regulation is under control.  As long the bread and circuses keep us all happy we should thank our governments.

         Stayed tuned for next Tuesday's post:  And Now For the Sticky Topic I Meant to Talk about Last Week But Got Carried Away Complaining About Things I Probably Can't Do That Much About.....

God Bless America

Blog Boggled: Sneakery, Piquery, and Downright Skulduggery

          Have you ever felt like calling the blog police?  Have you experienced a break-in at your blog site?  By that I'm referring to unwelcome blog comments or those weird things that are in no way comments, but just weird things that seem to come from out of the blue--intrusions on the idyllic peacefulness of your blog.  Or have you yourself ever been a blog invader?   And what exactly constiutes invasion?  These are just a few of the questions I would like to ponder today and hopefully get some good feedback from you readers.

       Recently I followed the advice I found on a blogpost by Tamara Heiner  about eliminating the word recognition screening technology known as "Capcha" or "Captcha" which is sort of an acronym which stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart".  In other words, it is a test which is supposed to keep automated spamming programs from invading our sites and leaving useless advertising messages or nefarious web addresses on our comment pages.

        As I stated in a previous Blog Boggled post, I eliminated the Capcha test to see if it increased my comments in any way.   It's only been two weeks but I have my initial conclusion:  I don't know for sure, but I don't think it matters that much.  The rate of comments has remained about the same and seems to correspond according to how much I have commented on other blogs.  I really don't think other bloggers mind the Capcha that much, and probably, like I did, learned how to avoid losing comments.  Actually, I sometimes enjoy seeing what the "word" is and have noticed others, as well as myself, mentioning the capcha identification word in their comments.

           Has my spam increased?  Maybe--I'm not real sure.  I think some of the off the wall things are manually entered by some person in India or somewhere--and this is not to be derogatory towards India, but I've seen the link for "Work at Home India" or something like that..  I've also gotten repeated messages at different times, messages that I've seen appear in other blog comments, about investing or other weird stuff. They usually have a link to click on or a web address, but no way am I going to click on these links or go to these web addresses unless they really appear to be legitimate and harmless.

         I understand some people are merely advertising their businesses and I have the option of deleting their messages and that's what I do unless there is something humorous about the message and I want to let it into my comments.  We all have the option of controlling what we publish in our comments if we have the "Comment moderation" box checked in our settings. I get comments emailed to me first in order for me to screen before I publish or reject them.  However, I've seen some of these spam comments showing up in some blog comments so maybe those blogs aren't moderating their comments or they are just publishing everything that comes their way.   Did you ever see one of those messages all in Chinese characters or something like that?

         Now personally I have promoted my own blog through another blog's comments.  But I try to always be polite about it, leave a relevant comment, or have a sense that the person upon whom I am intruding might be interested in the post I am promoting.  I don't like to think that I am an intruder on their blog, but a guest with something I'd like to share.  I welcome a visit to my blog from another blogger who wants to share something they've posted.  It rarely happens, but when it does I think it's kind of friendly--kind of like a neighbor dropping by with some cookies they've baked or something they've grown in their garden.

        Then there are those visits that just pique my curiosity about the other bloggers--which is every new visit from a blog I haven't seen before.  That's part of the fun of commenting and getting comments.  Just popping in on strangers to see if they'd like a new friend is kind of fun and can lead to some valuable relationships. 

          When the visits are genuine attempts to make positive contact, to learn, to advise, to give support, or even to constuctively criticize or disagree, I think it is perfectly acceptable and welcomed by nearly all of us who blog.  But those sinister invasions meant to do us harm or make us look bad in the eyes of others are something we can all do without.  There are things that ol' computer dummies like me don't totally understand--like viruses, bots, spys, and what-nots.   I just want to blog and enjoy the community.

           If you've gotten rid of "capcha", did you notice any increase of comments?  Increase in spam?  How do you deal with spam?  Have you ever clicked on one of those weird links in comments?  Have you ever had a bad experience after clicking on a link or going to a site meant to harm your computer?   Have you ever promoted one of your blog posts on someone elses site?  How do you feel about others doing this in your comments?

            I found another excellent post on improving your blog at  Living Out Loud .  Check it out.
            Also, as pointed out in the comments here L. Diane Wolfe also has a post about this today.