Red Beans and Rice

I make red beans and rice quite often, I always try different ingredients each time sometimes a little Slap Your Mamma to give it a little kick, how ever this time I added in some cimmion and not only did it smell good it tasted good.

I'm sure that the after effects won't smell all that great. Please feel free to comment and let me know how you make your!

Avoid Loans from RISE

Rise is nothing but a big scam, sure your payment may get reduced from time to time but your balance goes up. For a $2000 loan that I have been paying on for over two years twice a month my balance is now $2176 my last payment of $177.96 only applied $10 to the balance the rest was interest.

This company is a bunch of crooks, they're operating just like the only other loan company that I had a hard time paying off Cash Call.

I still have 20 more payments to make which works out to be over $3000 which means that $2000 will cost me over $7000 to pay off.

I don't with ill will on anyone but I really want these crooked trash to be found guilty of some criminal charges and have to do some prison time.. 60 years should do.

Why! Because they are not helping people, they are hurting them in the long run. They lie on their commercial and website.

I only wanted a loan of $1000 but they would not give me less than $2000, they tried to stick me with a $5000 loan thank God I did not take it not only would the payment be over $550 a month but in the end it would have cost me around $13,000.

Do what you want but I suggest if you need money go to a bank or local loan company and don't borrow more than you need or can afford to pay back.

On top of this they are trying to offer me another loan that would pay off the current loan and give me $247 on top of what I would owe. Now to me even with a lower interest rate I would end up owing more than I owe now.

Wow I just paid them $1000 and still owe them over $1000 it's a scam for sure. Unlike most other loans that go down as you make payments this one does not.

If I wait until the end of the month to make another payment I will owe them over $100 more dollars just in interest.

Emulators and Roms

I love playing games of today but there is something about the old classics of the past that I love but like most thing it is hard to acquire a working system to play the loads of games that are collecting dust in my house and shed. But I do have a couple extra computers that are great for playing classic games using emulators and roms or disk images.

Granted it is not lawful to just download game after game unless you own the game already then you are allowed to download a copy, but who am I to say what games you own and what games you don't own. Anyway here's three sites where you can find easy to acquire emulators and roms without too many hoops to jump through.

1. http://romhustler.net/ | very easy to use site I like them the most. Files appear to be clean but with anything you download a virus scan is always a good idea.
2.  http://www.emuparadise.me/ | a little bit more than just emulators and roms like game music, scans of comics and game magazines.
3. http://coolrom.com/ | not as cool as they used to be but still quite good, seems to lack any Nintendo roms now, they used to carry them. They download process takes a few clicks but not bad.

There are plenty of other sites but these are the ones that I happen to like the most... I hope that this very short post will help someone who stumbles across it.

Microsoft Surface 2

I got a Microsoft Surface 2 about a week ago and just have not enjoyed it the way I thought I should having paid over $500 for it. It all started with the very common no battery detected which after quite a few plugging and unplugging changed to plugged in not charging for a little bit.

I have never had this problem with an Android device or Apple I should have gotten the Samsung Tablet like I got for my wife. I thought being Windows that some programs would run or you could get most of the same apps and games that they have on Android.

Said to say you can't do any of the above thing because...

• You can only install items gotten through the Windows Store.
• What programs and games that are in the Windows Store charge you where they are free on other platforms.
• It runs on the ARM chipset and will not run standard Windows programs.

I understand that this was done for security reasons, but really I think its Microsoft's way of controlling how we use our tablets. After all whats the point of having a tablet that only runs Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, damn near forces you to use the Metro Start Menu even if you prefer the desktop.

Before I put any apps or anything on my tablet I ran Windows Update which has ran 3 times sense then and now I am down to 10 gigs out of the 32 gigs that it was supposed to have. I mean really if I am running a stripped down version of Windows 8 the updates should be smaller and fewer. As far as security goes that's why I buy Antivirus and Anti-spyware software and to top it off its Wifi only so it's not like I have Internet access all the time.

I really think Microsoft should place a warning on the box with all the things that you want be able to do. I even tried the jailbreak for the Surface 2 but it did not work for me. I was hopping it would allow me to at-least run the portable apps from my 64 gig thumb-drive.

But it's not all bad once you get used to just the basics, after all Microsoft Office alone is a great office suite and does everything I could want, I can work on my blogs and websites post on social networks, edit pictures, and even work on learning programming, watch videos, and almost the same things I could be doing with an Android tablet.

I find it funny that I hardly have anything installed on my tablet and I'm down to 10 gigs when my wife has over 20 gigs free and has a ton of games and apps on her tablet she has an office app that can create, open, and edit Microsoft Office files and its free, graphics programs that are free, lots of games that are free that cost up to $3.99 in the Windows Store.

It would be so much better and more productive for me if I could get a working jailbreak and could use my portable apps even if I could not install any 3rd party apps. Also I have a 32 gig micro-sd card but not really using it, I wish I could use it as a catch all for Windows make it so that all my updates and system files are on it which would free up a good bit of space.

I have a 64 gig drive that I was planning on using was hopping that I could get the apps from the Windows store to Install onto the sd card but did not have any luck yet. There has to be some tweaks that will allow me to set where I want apps to be installed.

However if I can't find some way to make this tablet more suited for my needs I guess I will have to do a factory reset and sell it on ebay, and go out and get an Android tablet. For those people who are thinking about getting a Microsoft Surface 2 32 gig I suggest you rethink it unless your alright with very limited space, sheer lack of good apps and games, not that I play a lot of games I mainly play World of Warcraft and knew when I got the tablet that there was no chance of getting WoW running on the tablet due to the ram mainly.

Anyway if all you need is a few apps and a good office suite then I say go for it, it is a good feeling tablet that preforms nicely for everything that I have tried, not sure about the Surface Pro don't really want to drop that kind of money on a tablet unless someone wants to just toss large sums of cash my way lol... like that's going to happen.

Well looking at this it appears that the Surface Pro 2 should run desktop apps because it has an Intel processor but does not say for sure on the sales page... take a look...

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/products/surface-pro-2

Storage Shelves

I plan on building some storage shelves for my shed Monday. I will have to go to the hardware store and buy 10 2x4s for the frame.

I have a few already and the plywood, plus all the screws that I need. Of course I will have to clear the area that I will be using.

I will post some pictures of my shabby work when I finish it.

Done with the first set of shelves but can't take a picture yet still loading them down with crap. I did get lucky because I did not have much of a plan and a couple of the new 2x4s were bowed a bit.

I was going for a 24" spread so that I could get two shelves out of a sheet of plywood. But letting my son help me by holding everything up while I screwed the braces in place, I turn my back and he had let it slide 3 inches.

Yeah 27" shelves by 8' long. Which I could have fixed before I built the rest of the frame. But like a dummy I did not double check to see if my son let the frame move.

However it worked out fairly well, I only had 1 and a half sheets of plywood. Which worked out in the end just barely but hey I'll know better next time. 

To start with I will go to a lumber yard where I can pick my own boards. I'll also make a mark on the floor and wall there I want everything so nothing gets out of place.

I forget to get pictures before returning to work, oh well I guess I will snap a couple when I get back home.

Made It Home Again

I finely made it home after being gone for six weeks. I got off the boat Thursday October the 9th over in Freeport Texas.

All in all it was a nice trip just kind of windy at times. I went from one boat for three weeks to another for a week and then another for two weeks.

The only thing that is a pain in the butt is that I did not have but about $50 cash which went quite fast because I got a burger, fries and a drink at the airport in Houston so that was $20 gone, then another drink and a pack of gum so another $5 gone leaving me with $25 cash.

This really did not matter because I checked my credit card and debit card the day before I got off the boat and I had $220 on one and $235 on the other or so I thought.

Well it appears that there were some changes that I did not make show up on my credit card so that money was going, found that out when I went to get gas for my truck.

But I still had my debit card with $235 on it so I topped off my truck with $50 in gas and hit the road. I stopped at another gas station after being stuck in traffic for close to two hours.

I got me another drink, a powerball ticket and a mega millions ticket which I paid cash for so that was another $5 gone. I get to Mississippi and my wife wanted me to drop by Walmart and pick up a movie and a couple of household items OK no biggie.

Well I get to Walmart in Saraland Alabama and I get the items and her movie, I also get Godzilla for me. I get to the check out and everything turned out to be $63 and some change.

Knowing that I still had over $100 on my debit card I swipe it, denied. WTF!!! I do it 3 more times so I remove my Godzilla movie and used my $20 cash which knocked it down to $26 and some change.

So I swipe my card again and I am denied again then I got an email alert so I called the number and as I was going thru the automatized bullshit I get three text alerts and a call started to come in just as I finish the call I was on.

It was the same thing an automated faurd system. At this point I was more than a little pissed off and embarrassed because I was holding up the line and I hardly ever need to put anything back.

Anyway it turns out that I did have the money and after a few minutes I paid for the items minus my movie and left. Today I have to check to see that I did not get over charged and to see what happened to my credit card.

Because if it has been hacked or something then I need to stop the $400 payment and attempt to recover my money and get a new card.

AT&T Connection Issues In Bay City Texas

Southwestern Bell payphone with new AT&T signage (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've been in the Bay City Texas area for about a week now and my mobile hotspots have been driving me crazy they for fine some of the time and at other I get disconnected every five minutes, its enough to make me go more then a little crazy. I use the mobile hotspot on my Galaxy Note 3 with AT&T which is 4g the service says I have 4 bars most of them time but when I go to do something it drops to 1 bar.

Verizon High Speed Internet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Verizon is not any better I only have 3g coverage here so I'm paying all this money and not getting anything out of it. I really need to find some internet that just works everywhere I travel, at least the main areas I go. It would make life a lot simpler.

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Making a few days

I'm planning on riding a few weeks trying to get closer to the 90 days that I need to upgrade my license to master of towing inland which will go great with my master of towing western rivers.

Also building up some extra days and money never hurts. I've been off quite a lot over the last few months for my mother before she passed away, then the company left me off about two weeks after I requested to return. Then my uncle passed away after I returned to work for only two weeks.

So yeah I have to get I'm a mind set to ride over so I can achieve the goals that I have set for myself.u

A Little Rainbow

We were sitting pushed into the mudbank here across from Devil's Elbow when I look out of the window and this is what I saw...

Exiler of Ancient Knowledge

So now for the second time in the last two weeks I have gotten an Elixir of ancient knowledge and for the second time half of it got wasted.

Between getting disconnected twice, having over a dazen freeze-ups, and having to fix the swimming pool which took maybe seven or eight minutes royally wasted my time cutting it down from an hour down to about thirty minutes.

Still it was not too bad I did go from 61 to 67 in the time I had. Given the full hour I fill that I could have hit seventy-five or eighty.