I have watched a lot of YouTube videos that indicate that GenZ is not working out in the workplace. Demands for remote work, flex hours at their leisure, 30-hour work weeks with 40-hour pay, and lots of PTO. They are also defined as lazy, non-committal, and without any initiative.

Now being retired, I do not have to work with any Z’s, but I have noticed that many are not into the customer service thing, almost like we are an inconvenience. So my observations are limited.

I have also followed the progress of AI, and although not a big fan of handing over control to a “thinking” machine, I am catching on to the robotic side of the AI spectrum. Looking at it from a business standpoint, I can understand the rush to incorporate robotics into the workplace, especially if the work is manual labor, more repetitive then critical thinking.

Would I be okay with a robot putting together my Whopper? Yes, so long as the robot is clean. What about changing the oil in my car? Of course. Mowing my yard? Yes. Painting the house? Yes.

So, I ask you this, is the GenZ workforce going extinct?

Would you blink twice if your fast food was prepared faster, cheaper, and without attitude?

Last Wednesday, my PCP recommended a lab test to try and determine the cause of my fatigue, spiked Heart Rate, and labored breathing. It had gotten to the point where even simple chores were impossible to accomplish.

The labs were at 8AM. At 11AM my phone rang. It was my oncologist, and she was in a panic. She told me I needed to get to the ER NOW! She was insistent. She offered to send an ambulance. I told her we were ten minutes away, so Cupcake and I dropped everything and headed to the VA ER. They were waiting on me. They dropped me in a bed, and put an IV in each arm, and started to drip stuff in me.

They moved me to a Private Room on the 6th floor, and immediately started to put blood in me. Three units in total. Then 3 bags of Iron. When that was done, they rushed me to GI, where they did an Upper and Lower, and then a Bowel Resection CT SCAN.

Turns out my Hemoglobin plummeted from 12 to 4.4. At 4, organs shut down, at 3, death occurs. Talk about scary.

I stayed a week, but I have lots of follow-up appointments. More labs tomorrow at 7AM. For now, my Hemoglobin in stable at 9.7. Guess they saved my life.

My advice? Do not ignore anything that is abnormal with your body. Waiting causes problems.

It is the year 2030, and I have been prompted to change my bank password. No big deal, until I read the “password guidelines”.

1. Must contain 125-175 characters
2. Must use 4 foreign languages
3. At least 30 of the characters must be numbers, and half must be prime
4. Must contain at least one of the Algorithms used to land Apollo 11 on the moon
5. At least 6 of the letters must be in 12 Font New Times Roman Italic
6. The remaining letters must be in Bold Font
7. You must use at least 2 of the characters found in ancient Latin
8. It must solve the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture

Would you like AI to generate one for you?

Cupcakes Desktop PC stopped processing the Wi-Fi signal. Yep. Just stopped processing. The machine was accepting it at full speed, but would not process, causing crashes and lots of search timeouts.

Now, I am no computer dummy…actually my skills are pretty good, so I went on a 3-day search to find the culprit, and, damn if I didn’t. Turns out her computer, which is about 6 years old, was okay accepting Windows 11, but as updates were downloaded, new PC requirements were needed. The last update found her PC to now be incompatible with Windows 11, and one of the primary updates was for….get this….network connectivity. So basically, the new update made her computer obsolete in one quick stroke.

Rather than spend a fortune trying to upgrade a lost cause, I purchased a new system. State of the art, lots of speed, yada-yada, but here is where our failure to keep up really struck home. They do not make PC’s with VGA monitor ports anymore. It is all HDMI. Our monitor did not have an HDMI outport. The PC did not have VGA in-port. I figured I was also going to have to upgrade her monitor, but (hallelujah!) found a VGA to HDMI adapter for $15. Bought it and it worked. Money well spent.

Problem 2: The new PC’s do not have DVD/CD anymore. WTF? I still have software that downloads via DVD, and now I cannot do that? This is not going to work, so I had to purchase an external CD/DVD driver to connect (via USB 3.0 port), so I can download this software.

I swear to God, my next computer is going to be an abacus.

I write this blog because one of my readers was amazed at the amount of training that went into being a soldier. So, I am going to pass on a story that will lend a strong belief that no matter the specialty, soldiers are the best at what they do, and the civilian counterpart could never match their skill sets. There is no embellishment to this story, and no part misplaced:

It was winter (February)1985, in Central Germany, and we were conducting an exercise called REFORGER (Return of Forces to Germany), held twice a year, once in the spring and once in the winter, designed to simulate our rapid response to a full-scale Soviet invasion. I was in a Command APC M557A2, one of many armored vehicles in the convoy, on a mud-slicked road winding around some dense hillside forest. It was around 2AM, a heavy blizzard, and temperatures that could freeze a bird in mid-flight. We were in blackout conditions, meaning no white light (none at all), and we were relying on the dim red light reflection of the vehicle in front of us for guidance, and he the same with the vehicle in front of him.

One of the M-60 tanks in mid-convoy blew its engine pack, meaning it was dead in the water. 2AM, blizzard, blackout conditions, sub-zero temperatures, and frozen mud to our kneecaps, and the entire convoy ground to a halt. The Convoy Commander, an LTC from one of the participating units, called over the mechanic and asked him what needed to be done. The Mechanic, an E-6 whom I really liked….not too smart but could fix ANY mechanical issue, simply stated that the oil pump blew and the engine was lost. The entire pack needed to be replaced. Now these engines dwarf the engines in a semi. They are huge, with lots of moving parts. Normally, they would call for an M-88 tank retriever, but because of the location, this could not be done, so the replacement had to be done on-site. By now it was 2:15 AM. The convoy commander asked how long it would take.

Know what the mechanic said? “Sir, you get the engine here, and I will finish before you drink your first cup of coffee”. Three hours to change an entire engine pack, in the dark, on a muddy hillside, freezing cold with snow coming down at a blizzard rate, and with few tools. What he did have was manpower, expertise, and the idea that he WAS NOT GOING TO BE THE REASON THE MISSION FAILED. So about 30 minutes later, a helicopter appeared with a new engine in a sling, lowered it to the ground, and the mechanic, already deep in removal, signed the chit sheet accepting the engine, and off he went.

2.5 hours later, he was done. Just an extraordinary accomplishment.

Here is the purpose of my story: The Military trains each soldier to a specialty, and continues to train, because each skill set is set to be a part of a mission that involves other soldiers, and no soldier wants to be the reason that mission fails. It is a sense of pride.

It is not the training alone that makes them better than their civilian counterparts; it is also the conditions in which they must perform their tasks.

Disclaimer: This post is about my frustration with rampant stupidity and is not intended to insult my very well-educated readers.

I read two different news articles yesterday that were intertwined, and just made me chuckle. One was how the young working generation was advocating for another jump in minimum wage so that even the lowest-skilled labor would have a “living wage”. The other was blaming inflation on politics and tariffs.

I found these two articles conflicted in an oxymoronic way. Those who tend to gravitate toward lower-skilled labor jobs (primarily fast food) do not understand the economics of pay scales. The more they ASK for, the poorer they will be. They want $30 an hour? Sure, then those making $30 will need $40, those making $40 will need $50, with an ad nauseam escalation into eternity.

The employers, needing to make up for this burgeoning payroll and ledger debits, will HAVE to increase prices. Notice that? They HAVE to, or fold up shop and eliminate more jobs. Rent goes up, groceries go up, cost of utilities go up…. everything goes up, especially necessities, making the dollar worth less, and, subsequently, less purchasing power.

So your $30 an hour will STILL not be enough. All it does is cause a greater inflation rate, which the media will blame on WHOEVER is sitting in the Oval Office.

The ONLY way to increase your lot in life is to put yourself in a position to earn more, independent of everyone else. Sitting on your couch trying to level up on HELOC does not qualify, and creating an “influencer” page on TikTok is a lottery-like long shot.

Hard work, patience, and determination are the trifecta of success. Always has been, always will.

Merry Thanksgiving and Happy Christmas…wait…something seems off…. Thanks Christmas .Merry Giving Thanks Merry Giving Christmas Happy Thanks Giving Happy

Nah, I had it right the first time.

Well, day two, and it did not work. Not even the black. It started to smear all over the paper until it looked like a Generation Z hair coloring. So I bit the bullet and ordered HP original’s, $70 for the pair (the printer only cost me $99 new). Delivered this morning, and all is good….EXCEPT-

No more HP. If they are going to put all these stupid “our cartridges only” safeguards, time for me to shop around and replace the damn thing. I am considering the Canon one that has the refillable ink wells. Has anyone else tried it or have any experiences with Canon? It scores a 4.4 on Amazon, but always figure .6 of the users are complete dumbasses anyway.

We have an HP Printer. It is not the latest and greatest, but it is also not ancient. It is an all-in-one, wireless device that serves us well, but it is kind of like taxes on your house. You really do not OWN it as long as you have to keep buying overpriced ink cartridges. Ours are the HP 63, and run anywhere from $26 to $45, depending on whether it is an XL.

So I took the plunge and bought a refill kit; this way, I can get the cost down to about 30 cents a cartridge. Today was my first day attacking this process, and it did turn out to be easier than anticipated so long as I followed the directions.

The result? The black cartridge worked perfectly. The color, not so much. I am going to pull it out and try again, hoping maybe I just did not get the right holes filled. If it does not work, then I may have to just buy the original HP color cartridge, which we only have to do about once a year anyway.

The black, though, we use more frequently and finding success on the refill is a glorious moment in “overcoming” corporate greed!

The new Mayor of NYC has stated he wants to open city-managed, affordable grocery stores. Here is a quick lesson on why they will fail.

He has to get his groceries from the same distributors that a privately run grocery store orders. If Walmart pays $1.00 per apple, so will the city run stores.

Walmart runs on a 2% profit margin, so in order to make the city stores affordable, they will have to run on basically no profit margin. That leaves no room for pay raises, employee insurance, paid vacations, or promotions…..all the things today’s workers (and unions) are demanding.

So he has to demand that the distributors charge him less. They won’t. They have no reason to. There are thousands of Walmarts, but only a handful of city-managed stores. The Mayor will huff and puff, but in the end, the distributors will just stop distributing. Walmart, on the other hand, can negotiate a cheaper price based on volume. They can get the apple down to 97 cents while the city stores still pay $1.00. Extrapolate this economic gut-punch to EVERYTHING in the store, and it is game over.

This leads to empty shelves. Don’t think so? Just go and see pictures from the city-managed grocery store attempt in Kansas.

These stores collapsed, even after a taxpayer-funded bailout of $18 million. They could not sustain enough of a profit to stay open.

Just one of the reasons socialism fails.