Playing Cards for Sale at Zazzle Gregvan - You May Change the Words: March 2018

Green World Rising dot Org - Solar and Wind Energy instead of Fossil Fuels. It's happening now! Great Movies...

http://www.greenworldrising.org

ABOUT US. Green World Rising is a series of short films on the state of climate and solutions to the climate crisis. All the films of Green World Rising are for global distribution, free to the public and hold a Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International.

http://www.greenworldrising.org/last-hours

About LAST HOURS. The film “Last Hours” describes a science-based climate scenario where a tipping point to runaway climate change is triggered by massive releases of frozen methane. Methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, has already started to percolate into the open seas and atmosphere from methane hydrate ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bRrg96UtMc WATCH Last Hours for free on YOUTUBE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKFWUZ0KkJg - The Movie "Carbon"
Narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, CARBON tells stories of communities fighting climate change. The film can be seen at greenworldrising.org, where viewers can also take action with resources to contact elected officials and spread the word. "This film is meant to be an asset for the climate movement and to generate momentum for the global reduction of carbon emissions," said Leila Conners, director of the film, which was produced by George DiCaprio, Mathew Schmid, Roee Sharon and Earl Katz, and presented by Thom Hartmann. Conners added, "We must move toward renewable energy and to create a real solution, hopefully well before the COP 21 in Paris in 2015.” The next three films in the Green World Rising series will be released in succession leading up to the UN Climate Summit in New York this September.

In 2001, I started college at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California studying Computer Information Systems.

I originally wanted to get a degree in Computer Science but that major required TWO semesters of Calculus and was designed to study Hardware and I felt more interest in Software. I was a senior returning student as I was 47 years old. Most students were in their 20's but three of us had gotten into AA and changed our lives around and had decided to attend college. I asked an AA member I knew in Chico how to get college loans and she taught me the system of applying for FAFSA online at the public library's computers. I quit my job at WREX plastics.

My wife and I moved from Chico to Eureka and she got a job as a data entry person at a health care company. We had difficulty finding an Apartment and had to live in The Budget Motel on Highway 101 for three months with our three cats. Eventually we moved into a small apartment behind a log cabin in Cutten. This building was on the edge of a second growth redwood forest. There were paths through the forest creted by dirt bike riders and it was possible to hike all the way to the Freshwater Valley (5 miles away).

I drove a little white truck on the old road to Arcata every day to go to school. It was a Chevy LUV Mikado (Isuzu Pup) that we bought for $1,000 in Chico from "The Well" (a prisoner rehab organization designed to help ex-cons rejoin society). Eventually I painted a giant blue heart with rays of red and white exploding out of it on the Hood of the Truck. Everyone smiled when I drove by and some people saluted.

School taught computer programming in the language C++ and SQL. At every turn we were encouraged to help ourselves by using Google to find tutorials about how to accomplish whatever task we were doing. The fundamental idea was that after graduation we would have to solve our own problems at work. We also learned JAVA, Javascript and HTML. Older students were encouraged to teach younger classmates as the experience of teaching really enforces the lessons learned. We built an online store. My friend Tom showed me how to create an animated GIF that showed all sides of a coffee cup by spinning the product around. Later Tom was employed at The Welfare Office of the County of Humboldt and helped get me a Job there.

After graduating in 2005 many students took computer science jobs in Locations far away from Eureka but I did not want to move as this location is IDEAL. A Cool and Rainy climate that never gets so cold as to have snow and never too hot. Living behind the "Redwood Curtain" it was difficult to believe that the rest of the world even exists. I could read about difficulties and troubles the outside world was having but often I simply turned the page. There was 9/11 and wars and hurricanes and racial difficulties but we simply didn't participate. Arcata is a town that was mainly influenced by Hippies who grew marijuana, fishermen, loggers and the University.

One remarkable teacher is Dr. Eugene Novotny. He taught my "World Music" overview class and was the leader of the Humboldt Calypso Band (Steel Drums) and the Samba Parade. They would play the drums and march around town leading Mardi Gras Dancers. I often took pictures of the musical events and published them on the internet. We had many anti-war protest marches against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least one major march downtown on March 19th including a VERY LARGE protest BEFORE the Iraq War began. Actually, MILLIONS of people worldwide protested against that war before it started but Bush invaded anyway. History has shown that Bush was an Idiot and invaded the wrong country. Iraq had no ties to Al-Qaeda, No WMD and Nothing at all to do with 9/11. That was a Saudi-Arabian attack.

Read more of my autobiography at: http://gvan42.blogspot.com/2018/03/growing-up-in-los-gatos-california-in.html

When the Democrats take the House of Representatives, Impeachment is Inevitable. What can one person do to help? 2018 is OUR YEAR!

Campaign in your own local election for the House Seat. You can find out who your representative is by typing your zip code into this website. https://www.house.gov/representatives
Then you can post messages promoting Democratic Candidates on your own Blog, Twitter or Facebook page.

You can also join https://nextgenamerica.org/ They are trying to register young people to vote. In general, Young People did not vote in the 2016 election. Mainly because BOTH CANDIDATES WERE TERRIBLE. I didn't vote. I liked Bernie Sanders. Hillary stole the Democratic Nomination thru the use of "Super Delegates" - People that were chosen by the Democratic Party Leaders, NOT the voters. It was a rigged system.

https://marchforourlives.com/ More people attended March for our Lives than attended Trump's Inauguration. That's because Most people are In Favor of Good and Opposed to Evil. Their next event is Registration of Young People to vote. If you are not 18 years old, please talk with your parents about removing Republicans from elective office. The NRA sponsors Republicans.

NRA leader speaking at a Republicrime Event

Another Organization that created many protests for the Obamacare Battle is
https://www.indivisible.org/ They are a good meeting place for the Violet Overgrow of the Gubbermint!

In order to change public opinion, please Post articles from newspapers detailing the bad actions Republicrime people are doing. The Russians believe that Social Media is Effective. They employed Trolls to Campaign against Hillary in 2016. We can voice our own opinions and retake The Government of the USA!

For Example: Scott Pruitt of the EPA wants to end auto pollution laws. That would be good for the super rich people that own automobile corporations but bad for people that breathe air. The Republicrime Party are the Puppets of the Super Rich... Passing Laws that make them even richer at the expense of the common man. Here is the Article from the newspaper and Link for people to read more.

"E.P.A. Prepares to Roll Back Rules Requiring Cars to Be Cleaner and More Efficient.
The Trump administration is expected to launch an effort in coming days to weaken greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy standards for automobiles, handing a victory to car manufacturers and giving them ammunition to potentially roll back industry standards worldwide."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/climate/epa-cafe-auto-pollution-rollback.html

2018 is a brand new race with over a thousand candidates running for House or Senate seats.

The Trump and the Republicrime Congress have caused harm to America. For Example:

1. Passed a law that makes it easier for mentally ill people to buy guns. People that are receiving Social Security Disability Checks for Insanity are now eligible to purchase firearms. This LAW is insane!

2. Passed a Tax Cut for the Rich Law. No one that I know has received a tax cut because all my friends work for a living at a job. However, our COSTS for health insurance has gone up. This law was written by the rich for the rich.

3. Increased enforcement of immigration laws... attacking anyone that looks Hispanic... ICE is chasing random Latino people, citizens and aliens. DACA was repealed by Trump causing a very real threat of deportation to a million children brought to the USA by their parents.

4. Appointed Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. He has spent his career fighting against the EPA as a lawyer for the OIL and GAS industry. His goal is to dismantle the EPA so corporations can cut the costs of disposing of waste responsibly. Generations of Americans will live in polluted environments causing health disasters.

5. Appointed Ryan Zinke to lead the Department of the Interior. He reduced the size of National Monuments so OIL and GAS companies can drill on Federal Land. AND Trump made it legal for OIL companies to drill offshore... Creating the opportunity for ecological disaster like we had in the Gulf of Mexico.

6. Appointed Betsy DeVos hear of the Department of Education. She is opposed to funding Public Schools and is in favor of funding Private Schools. Private Schools are designed to have the freedom to teach "alternative" concepts like Creationism instead of Evolution using Federal Money to Promote Christianity. Private Schools are designed to be affordable by rich white students and NOT affordable by poor Black and Latino students. Segregation...

7. Now they plan to "Privatize" the Veterans Administration healthcare system. That would enrich people that own Hospitals and Health insurance companies while providing worse service for veterans. The GOAL of a Privatized Health Care system is PROFIT. The GOAL of the VA is GOOD HEALTH for VETERANS.

In California: https://registertovote.ca.gov/
Nationwide: https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote

Great Book: "The Wizard and the Prophet" by Charles C. Mann A plan for surviving Global Warming and the Population Bomb.

No matter what Trump and the Climate Change Deniers believe, we are headed for some rough times ahead. By the year 2050 it's predicted that there will be 10 billion people alive... how will we feed them all? OR will we control the population by mass starvation? It's also possible to reduce population by endless war... and/or genetically designed diseases... bio-weapons... Hurricanes and wildfires... However, we ought to create a future for ourselves and our children that does not involve creating I dystopian nightmare world. Ya-Think?

This book studies two main plans for preventing disaster... The Wizards believe that we can invent solutions to our problems and The Prophets believe that by changing our lifestyle/behavior we can save our lives. No doubt we need to do both...

Some simple things we can do to prevent eco-disaster. Use Less Electricity [removing the need for coal fired power plants]... Have fewer children [removing the need for over farming the limited land]... and Drive our cars less [ burning less oil and gas that creates air pollution]...

https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Prophet-Remarkable-Scientists-Tomorrows/dp/0307961699

The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World. An incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world.

Norman Borlaug: Agricultural Scientist that invented wheat that produced vastly more food per acre. The Green Revolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

William Vogt was an ecologist interested in population control and author of "Road to Survival"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Vogt

According to Charles C. Mann, "Vogt...laid out the basic ideas for the modern environmental movement. In particular, what is called 'apocalyptic environmentalism'—the belief that unless humankind drastically reduces consumption and limits population, it will ravage global ecosystems.

During the year I went to Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland I studied FORTRAN and COBOL.

I punched cards that were fed into a HP-3000 mini-computer. My final project for FORTRAN was to simulate playing a million games of Roulette to see if any betting system would be advantageous to a gambler. The answer is NO. For example: A betting system would be to place a bet on RED or Black: if you won-keep the money, if you lost-double your bet and play again. That way if you lost the first time but won the second time, you would still be one dollar ahead... The plan is to keep on collecting dollars... It would work unless you lost MANY times in a row. Eventually, the player either exceeds the table limit on how much a player can bet OR the player loses all his money and can't keep on playing. In general, this only happens if a player loses 7 or 8 times in a row... and in my simulation, I played a million games... and a losing streak always happened.

Then I took a couple of short term temp jobs thru an agency. One was working for an architechs office measuring old townhouses in downtown Baltimore and then drawing floorplans. We went out in groups of three. One man held one end of the tape measure and the other held the other end. The third watched the truck to make sure it wasn't stolen. The abandoned townhouses were being sold by the City of Baltimore for $1.00 but the new owner had to promise to put a lot of money into reconstruction. We were drawing the floorplans so the builders could estimate how much material to buy. Often these abandoned townhouses were very elegant... built at a time when people had marble fireplaces... but over the years they had fallen into ruin.

Another temp job was at Ward Machinery in Towson. They built machines that created corrugated cardboard for boxes. Every installation was a custom job and so my task was to draw wiring diagrams from polaroid photographs of the machines after they were installed. One day The Nuclear Power Plant at Three Mile Island had an accident. We were about 50 miles from TMI and one of the engineers in my office was a Nuclear Engineer. He said there was nothing to worry about because the system was designedd to be safe unless 10 things went wrong all at once... He said that we were at about #8 and he left the office to drive to safety. As it turned out there was not a gigantic Nuclear Disaster. However, peeople close to the power plant did report tasting a metalic flavor when they breathed... sure sign of Uranium in the air.

I was driving to work from Columbia to Towson in the winter and it was very scary to go on the Baltimore Beltway during rush hour in icy conditions. I'm sure glad to come back to California where it does not snow.

Read more of my autobiography at: http://gvan42.blogspot.com/2018/03/growing-up-in-los-gatos-california-in.html

During my time at Analytics I ran my own business for one year as a consultant.

I was working for a Job-Shop and I got paid seven dollars an hour but the shop charged the company ten dollars an hour. I made an arrangement with the company to pay me the entire ten dollars and hour by billing them directly. I had to pay my own Social Security payments, file quarterly income tax withholding and collect the money from the company. One month the company simply told me that I had to wait for my payment. They were having cash flow problems and owed money to INTEL and Me. They selected to pay INTEL. After running my own consulting business for a year I re-hired the job shop as they were entirely worth the $3 an hour. They were happy to re-hire me and said: "Oh, we knew you would be back. Everyone thinks they can do better as a consultant... Until they try it."

Then I got a job offer at a higher rate of pay from Pulse Engineering of College Park. A salesman that visited Analytics also did business with Pulse and he made the contact. I took the job and we did custom electronic design for the NSA (National Security Agency). This was in a building with no windows and I got a Secret Clearance to work there. We made many things but I had no idea what they were. I was only told enough information to do my job and no more. We had a Faraday Cage in the factory. A room with grounded metal mesh walls. That room prevented any radio waves from leaving the room. Our work had to pass TEMPEST testing. That was a DoD standard that required electronic equipment NOT broadcast radio waves. The basic idea was that the Russians could use a custom Radio Receiver to spy on equipment... and be able to read what was printed on a computer's display. One product that we made was an encrypted telephone in a briefcase. That allowed people to go to a remote location and talk securely with the home base. This was during the 1980's and President Reagan was spending a lot of money in a cold war with the Russians. Eventually, I got fired from that job for not showing up. I was smoking a lot of Hashish at that time and I had gone to a Grateful Dead concert in Philadelphia and failed to come home and go to work on time. The owners came over to my house, found out that I was safe and then fired me. Then I took a five month vacation. Driving around the East Coast of the USA.

The next job was in the Engineering department of the United States Postal Service. I was hired to lead a team of CAD draftsmen who were redrawing the pencil and paper drawings into a computer system. Our goal was to incorporate new changes to the design of a stamp vending machine. It took six people about a year to complete that task. We used the software system called CADAM. Later I found out that computer system was only used at the USPS and Lockheed. A more popular system called AUTOCAD was used everywhere else. When I wen looking for a job as a CADAM designer, no one was interested. I never worked as a draftsman again.

I played music at the USPS Christmas Party. Richard Verril played piano and I played Guitar. I had created a book with all the lyrics and chord changes of my favorite songs. I remember that we played "Light my Fire" by the Doors and Richard knew all the notes for the organ solo. I was really impressed. He had played in a band in High School and they played all the block parties in Philadelphia.

Eventually I got fired from that Job for showing up late to work. The office was in Virginia and I lived in Maryland so I had to cross the Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac. Traffic Jams were unpredictable and so I got fired. Then I took an eight month vacation. I spent that time playing original music in my home recording studio. Synthesizers, guitars and drum machine.

Read more at: http://gvan42.blogspot.com/2018/03/growing-up-in-los-gatos-california-in.html

My first job in Washington DC was at Analytics Communications Systems, a very small custom electronics design firm in McLean, Virginia.

We built electronics devices for the Air Force and Banks. Our company was lead by Major Paul Jones, USAF retired. He bid on Pentagon contracts and we built them. There were 20 people total that worked there. We had no time clock and just did what was needed to get the job done. I worked as a draftsman/designer taping printed circuit card artwork and drawing sheet metal mechanical drawings for enclosures. When it came time to actually ship the products I also soldered together wiring on power supplies... Actually, everyone did whatever needed to be done when we were facing a deadline... and aftr it was done we had a party! I stayed there for six years. It require a confidential clearance from the Department of Defense. I became friends with another employee named Ken and we played music together at his townhouse in Manassas, Virginia. My wife JoAnn and I were living in a condo in Oxon Hill, Maryland. At first we lived in Columbia, Maryland in an apartment but then she had the "brilliant" idea that we should buy a "starter home". She went shopping and selected the condo. It turned out to be an idiotic decision. 12 years later I could not sell the condo and simply gave it back to the mortgage company. Her plan was to buy real estate, live in it, sell it for a profit and get a single family home. OOPS! Then she decided to rent out the condo and buy a "Cape Cod" style home near Tysons Corners, Virginia. We rented out the condo to a woman on government subsidized housing and she stayed there until she had another child and she had to move to a larger place. At this time JoAnn and I got divorced, we sold the house for a profit, split the money and I moved back into the condo... and she moved to Korea to take a government job at a military base. She worked at the NSA for two years. One year as a student learning how to transcribe phone calls in the Russian Language and one year actually transcribing them. Transcribing was astonishingly annoying, boring and depressing. Most of the calls were civilians complaining about living conditions in Russia. Then she took classes at night at the Computer Learning Center and was able to get a better job as a computer operator with a Top Secret Clearance. The clearance itself was worth about $20,000 and so she was very employable...

At Analytics we played Hearts every day at lunch. It's a card game sort of like bridge. Major Jones taught me to never sort my cards by suit in numerical order but to keep my cards in random order. If you sort your cards, the other players can guess what cards you have... For example: if you play the King of Hearts from the second position of your hand it is likely that the Ace is in the first position. I guess that he had a lot of time to play cards in thee Air Force...

Read more of my autobiography at:
http://gvan42.blogspot.com/2018/03/growing-up-in-los-gatos-california-in.html

Great Book: "Bad Stories" by Steve Almond. What the hell just happened to our country?

Like a lot of Americans, Steve Almond spent the weeks after the 2016 election lying awake, in a state of dread and bewilderment. The problem wasn’t just the election, but the fact that nobody could explain, in any sort of coherent way, why America had elected a cruel, corrupt, and incompetent man to the Presidency. Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is Almond’s effort to make sense of our historical moment, to connect certain dots that go unconnected amid the deluge of hot takes and think pieces. Almond looks to literary voices―from Melville to Orwell, from Bradbury to Baldwin―to help explain the roots of our moral erosion as a people.
The book argues that Trumpism is a bad outcome arising directly from the bad stories we tell ourselves. To understand how we got here, we have to confront our cultural delusions: our obsession with entertainment, sports, and political parody, the degeneration of our free press into a for-profit industry, our enduring pathologies of race, class, immigration, and tribalism. Bad Stories is a lamentation aimed at providing clarity. It’s the book you can pass along to an anguished fellow traveler with the promise, This will help you understand what the hell happened to our country.

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Stories-What-Happened-Country/dp/1597092266

Police Murder of an Unarmed Black Man IS NOT A LOCAL MATTER. Police have been Murdering Unarmed Black Men NATIONWIDE.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders (White House Speaking Puppet) says Sacramento Murder is a Local matter and the President has no opinion...
The police that committed the murder should be brought to trial. Black Lives Matter. It is morally wrong to legalize murder...

Sharpton vows justice for Stephon Clark at packed Sacramento funeral
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/us/sacramento-stephon-clark-protests-funeral/index.html

Police Shooting and Killing Black Men? It’s Not the White House’s Problem, Sarah Huckabee Sanders Says
https://www.theroot.com/sarah-suckabee-says-police-shooting-and-killing-black-m-1824163201

RELATED COVERAGE

Update: Stephon Clark activists stop light-rail trains downtown and block commute traffic

http://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article207342684.html

I worked at Radio Shack in San Jose during the 1990's. After I left Maryland I drove to my parent's house and started working at the Shack.

It was a very social job and I was paid commission to sell electronic stuff. One technique for selling more stuff was to draw diagrams for the customers who wanted to set up cable TV systems. The local cable company had two wires entering the house... some channels were on cable "A" and others were on cable "B". In order to distribute the cable TV signal to different rooms in a house was a rather complicated system. However, I knew how and could draw diagrams for the customer to follow... and... I just went around the store and collected everything they needed, took it to the cash register and rang it up. These people would tell their neighbors and friends to go see me and I got a lot of business that way. My years playing guitar and synthesizer music also lead to increased sales as I could recommend equipment that would allow customers to accomplish their dreams. It was fun to work there, sort of like an endless party. I drank a lot of booze during those years. A relaxed and friendly salesman sells more stuff.

We sold the most advanced personal computer at the time. It was called "The Sensation" and it had the first CD-Rom disk drive in a PC. I sold one system to a fellow that made computer games. He wanted to test drive his CD-Rom game product. Another self made millionaire to shop at our store bought a hundred magnets every year to give away at his lectures to third grade students. He hoped to give them a lasting remiinder of the wonders of science... hopefully to inspire future engineers. Another customer bought a Sensation Computer in order to write a product review for the Silicon Valley Computer Society Newsletter. That society originally was called The Home Brew Club and was started by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac. This customer also created a talking dictionary on a CD-Rom. The first of it's kind.

Wozniac built a museum in downtown San Jose and it was fun. Designed to appeal to elementary school students it had many interactive games and toys. One was a TV time travel device that randomly filmed the patrons of the museum and them merged those films into a kaleidoscopic show.

Read more of my AutoBiography at: http://gvan42.blogspot.com/2018/03/growing-up-in-los-gatos-california-in.html

The Wall between the USA and Mexico is a TERRIBLE Idea. The Pentagon should NOT pay for it. NO ONE should pay for it.

Trump can't get funding for his wall from Congress so now he is trying to get it built using Pentagon Funds. This plan is insane. Mexicans have been in California since 1760... Why build a wall now? It's hundreds of years too late.

Alternate Route for Trump's Border Wall - North of California

Dr. Hiral Tipirneni for Congress Arizona 8th District. Republicrimes are dumping vast amounts of Money to fight the Big Blue Wave...

http://hiralforcongress.com/ Dr. Hiral Tipirneni has dedicated her life to serving her community, solving problems, and improving lives. She's served the Phoenix area for more than 20 years as an emergency room physician, cancer research advocate and, most recently, on the board of directors of the Maricopa Health Foundation, which supports the ... click on the link above for more...

Police Murder Unarmed Black Man in Sacramento. Police Not Charged. Public Enraged.

Once again, on film... a man holding a cell phone received 20 bullets... The police say they thought it was a gun... mighty convenient excuse...

Protesters shut down Highway 5, the main freeway in California. Then they encircled the Golden 1 Basketball arena and refused to let ticket holders to go see the game.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The embattled Sacramento City Council, disrupted by angry protesters over the police shooting death of an unarmed black man, will not meet Wednesday out of respect for the victim's family and his wake, according to Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

Stephon Clark, 22, was fatally shot by police March 18 in his grandmother’s backyard. Officers said they initially thought he had a gun. He was holding a cellphone.

At Tuesday’s packed council meeting, Clark’s brother Stevante Clark jumped on the dais and demanded to speak, saying he didn’t think the council would make meaningful changes as a result of his brother’s death.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/03/28/embattled-sacramento-council-cancels-meeting-stephon-clarks-wake-community-seethes/465144002/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-sacramento-protests-stephon-clark-shooting-20180328-story.html