Freddie Mac's Confabulations

I don’t know if it's the time of year or just the fact that I dwell on this subject more often than I do not but I feel that it’s a subject that goes untaught or just not discussed often enough. What I am talking about is the basic principles of living life. Now I don’t just mean living life all Willy Nilly, what I mean is living life with purpose.

You may or may not know but I have spent the last 20 years working in law enforcement and spent a lot of those years seeing people on the worst days of their life in some of the most awe full situations. And as time went by I couldn’t help but wonder how people get into these types of problems. Now don’t get me wrong some of the answers were obvious with drug use and all the crimes that stem from those types of addictions.

But I couldn’t help but dwell on what happened in their lives that led them to drug addiction or even trying illegal drugs for the first time. I didn’t fully understand it because I have never used illegal drugs and the only addiction I really have is cigarettes.

Now I am not sure if there will ever be a complete science in understanding this behavior but as I grew older and had children it became a little more apparent to me. And as I see it the whole situation is generational so to speak.

The world has become more and more impersonal and more of an “All about Me” lifestyle.
Now I used to hate it when my dad or granddad would give me one of those “When I was a kid” speeches, but I think it’s time we actually paid attention and consider the ideals that came with those little talks we had with our elders.

And I know you have all read the articles and the TV shows that talk about how technology ruined the world for the older generations but there is some truth to that in my opinion.

My generation was given the gift of home computers in the mid 1980’s and I will admit I was fascinated and awe struck and it really gave me new ways to explore the world from the country farm where I lived. Then as time progressed a little the next thing you know here is the “Mobile Phone” later know as the cell phone and wow I was living in a new age of technology. I was having visions of flying cars and computerized kitchens that made your food for you and robots doing the housework.

Well I didn’t really have a clue what the future held but little did I know how it would affect us. Now here it comes, when I was a kid we ate almost all of our meals at a strange little well known piece of furniture called a table. Ok you may not know this but a table is not a place to stack things that you want to keep nearby but its actual purpose is to sit at it, with your family, and eat your meals. This allows time for families to communicate with one another and actually share their lives with each other.

I know sarcasm rarely doesn’t work but if you know me it’s just who I am. Somewhere along the way with the introduction of the internet and smart phones and all the other forms of electronic communication we became an impersonal world. I mean stop and think about it when we were kids (my generation) we would all leave the house and go visit friends and relatives and guess what, everyone went, no one stayed at home, and that was how we communicated with our friends and family.

My brother and I was having a little discussion the other day about teaching our kids to drive and some of the difficulties they were having compared to the difficulties we had learning how to drive. That’s when it clicked it my head.

When I was a little kid I remember riding in the truck with my dad and what I remember the most was how I paid so much attention to how he drove. All the little things, how he started the truck, watching him shift gears and using the turn signals and how they turned off automatically after he had finished the turn. And when it came time for me to learn how to drive I had a head start on knowing some of the basic functions of the automobile.

My kids, surprisingly to me, didn’t know a lot of these simple things. I assumed they did but they didn’t, and I blame myself for assuming and not preparing them. My kids, and most kids today, are not paying attention to how you drive, why? Well most of them are texting or on their little phones talking to their friends and staying in constant touch with one another, and in my opinion losing out on all the little things that actual life has to offer.

Enough rambling you all get the idea, what I am trying to convey to you is that the decisions we make in life is what defines us as human beings. Now we all make mistakes in life, that’s a given, but it’s how we deal with those mistakes define who we are. If we can recover from those bad decisions or even try hard to foresee them we can try to avoid the bad outcomes. That’s where our parents and grandparents life lessons really come in handy.

I hope this message finds you all well and I would like to wish you all a Happy Easter, God Bless.

Hello again everyone I hope this new BLOG post finds you all well. I am sorry that it has been a while since my last post but the holidays proved to be quite overwhelming. As you may or may not know but we had a blizzard here in this part of Oklahoma and well, as much as I wanted a white Christmas this one was quite unwelcome.

You see on Christmas Eve night a very rare Oklahoma Blizzard blew in and dumped a considerable amount of sleet and snow on us and incredible winds came with it. I was supposed to drive to the next county and pick up my daughter and son for Christmas but the weather made it impossible. I then thought well, maybe I will be able to pick them up in the morning. Well I was wrong.

Then next morning my wife and youngest daughter woke up and wished each other a Merry Christmas and then eagerly opened our presents. Wow what presents I received this year, but I’ll get back to that part later.

After the presents were opened and the thank yous were exchanged we had ourselves a little festive Christmas breakfast of bacon and eggs, and afterwards I began to formulate our chances of actually getting to travel. Well It just wasn’t in the cards that day, yes we did try and slid off into a ditch once and did escape the clutches of defeat but the traveling conditions proved too much and we soon after returned home defeated.

My biggest regrets were that I didn’t get to see Tyler and Tayler’s shining faces on Christmas Day but it was only the second time in my life that I didn’t get to see my parents on that day we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. But through the wonders of technology we made our phone calls and exchanged our Christmas greetings in the only way we could at the time.

But enough of the sadness I did mention gifts earlier so let me share that not-so-little tidbit with you. I wasn’t expecting too much for Yule Tide gifts this particular year but man oh man did I get some good gifts. The first was a pretty good sized gift box wrapped in the customary fashion in the festive wrapping paper for the occasion, sort of heavy but not too much.  I ripped into it like an over anxious 10 year old boy would and lo and behold inside was a miniature version of the infamous “Leg Lamp” from the movie “A Christmas Story”. I laughed so hard I nearly peed myself. It was wonderful, my wife Amy is the greatest she truly knows what makes me happy.

Well the first thing I had to do was plug it in and put it into the window, then I had to say the words “Only one thing could’ve dragged me away from the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window, and that’s Little Orphan Annie” don’t read anything else into that it’s just a quote from the movie. You see I must have watched that movie about a million times and it never gets old. Truly a Christmas Classic for the ages.

But I digress; I also received a second present. Truly surprised I was to get a second gift because I surely did not deserve it and I could not think of anything that could top the first gift. But I was wrong. I had received from my lovely wife a GPS. Wow I have always wanted a GPS. You see about a year or so before my oldest son purchased a GPS and I borrowed it from him a few times on some of our vacation trips and it came in real handy, as a matter of fact I became a little spoiled to it. So in typical husband fashion I began dropping the proverbial hints to my wife throughout the year in hopes that my subliminal messages would convince her to get me one for a gift for any occasion eventually.

Well my evil plan paid off and I received the ASUS R700 GPS for pedestrian or automobile use.

I was super excited because this was not your run of the mill GPS this thing had features! Aside from the mobile GPS function it has Bluetooth functionality for using your cell phone hands free. And it plays MP3’s and Videos and displays your favorite pictures that you load onto it.

Then I read on in the owner’s manual I discover that it has an FM transmitter so you can hear the music or GPS voice over your car stereo speakers, hmmm not bad at all. Then I find this function called TMC (Traffic Message Channel) receiver. It receives a signal transmitted over local radio station channels that sends out traffic information that the GPS receives and warns you about so that you can avoid the delay on your route.  It also came with and awesome windshield mount and all the accessory cables needed to get going right away.

Well I had to get this thing up and going and try it out all these functions. I soon discovered that the unit came with a micro SD card and it holds all the map information. Well the second time I turned the unit on the micro SD card crapped out and died. After much disgust I borrowed one from my daughter and carried on. After 8 hours or so and much research on the internet I figured out how to reload the software on the card and finally had the unit operational again.

Well for the following week I began to put the new Asus R700 GPS thought its paces and the further I went the more I was disappointed. To keep from dragging it out too much I will summarize its downfalls.

The video player did not play video for more than 1 second, the FM transmitter does not work for the phone which would be nice because the internal speaker is so low that you can’t hear the party you are speaking with unless you are at a full stop. The GPS could not find half the addresses I entered into it. Sometimes when you stop the map on the GPS would spin around. The default view is 2D and I prefer 3D view and it would change itself back to 2D randomly and often.

So I was finally let down enough by the Asus R700 my wife convinced me to return it for a refund and buy the one I want.  Well I finally agreed and began researching and most of the positive reviews leaned towards GARMIN and the long line of GPS products.

Mind you the Asus R700 retailed for over three hundred dollars but Amy found it on sale for a hundred so I had limited funds to work with. I eventually found the Garmin nuvi 265t and it was very surprising.


Granted it does not have nearly the same amount of features of the Asus did but it was close. I found that it does have Bluetooth for hands free operation of your cell and it had the TMC receiver function with the included USB cable that had the TMC receiver built in. The nuvi 265t also displays your favorite pictures and has a slot for an optional micro SD card.

It too came with an awesome window mount and an option for a temporary dash mount. And it also came with all the cables and documentation needed to get you going right out of the box. But here is what made me decide to keep it.

When using the Asus R700 the first trip I had it set to was the address of my Mom and Dad’s home near Tulsa, Oklahoma. Well it just couldn’t get it done it became confused and it tried to send me the wrong way. The GARMIN however sent me right where it was supposed to.  And while at my parent’s home the mail came and well, they had received someone else’s medication in the mail by mistake. So being the good Christians we try to be we looked up the parties number in the phone book and gave them a call and we explained the mistake and advised them we would be right over with their mail.

My father and I went out to my truck and typed in the address and let me tell you it took us to the exact spot we needed to be in. It was just the icing on the cake to tell me that I had made a good choice.  And as a side note on the way to my parents house the TMC feature advised me of a 1 minute delay in travel time, I suspect due to the ice storm that was underway at the time. Coincidentally the TMC feature on the Asus never would lock onto a signal.

That day everybody won. I am not normally the writer of product reviews but this one is mine. The Garmin nuvi 265t is worth every penny. The whole experience kind of reinforces my theory of expect the worst but hope for the best.

I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year and my God Bless You and Keep You!

All this talk about Christmas is still bringing back all those memories of years gone by. Recently my OLDER brother visited our mother and found some old pictures of all of us kids that I haven't seen in many years and even a few I don't think I have ever seen at all.

They were great and I really want to thank Mike for doing it. This one you see is yours truly atop of the ol' faithful "Craker Jack". I could regail you with many, many memories of this old steed, but I won't bore you with the details.

As you truly admire my fancy riding shorts and out of the stirrup riding sneakers, you could not imagine the happiness I was feeling while atop of this faithful mount.

Now mind you "Cracker Jack" was not my faithful Shetland Pony but he belonged to my cousins Kevin and Steve McGuire but I always felt (in my mind) that he was mine.

There were many days, when I was this age, that I strapped on my double holster red ryder cap pistols and put on my straw cowboy hat and fully intended to walk the mile across Keifer, Oklahoma to my cousins house to saddle old Cracker Jack up an go shoot it out with any bandits we could conjure up in my mind. There were times I would pester my dad to death just to go over to there house just so I could see that old pony. Of course I hardly ever got my wish, but from time to time I did get a few good rides on his back.

There is one particular memory that comes back to me quite often that I just love. One early summer morning just after sunup my dad woke me up and told me to get dressed and let's go and without question I did so, simply because "Dad said so". We got dressed in a hurry and we got into his truck and it was then that I noticed it was just me and him. Well that was extra special, I have a brother and three sisters and it just wasn't very often just me and dad went anywhere without the whole family in tow.

We drove across the little town of Kiefer to my Uncle William's house (home of Cracker Jack) and coincidentally where his mare "Blondie" was being pastured. And then he saddled up Blondie and Cracker Jack and he took me for a ride. Well I have to tell you that was just extra special that my dad would single me out for a horseback ride. And I had my own mount. I was riding along side my hero on the most extra special horse of my life at the time.

It was a great day in my life that I will never forget.

You see to me Craker Jack was the best horse in the world because he was the first horse (Shetland Pony) that I was not afraid of. I had discovered riding confidence on her back, simply because she was one tame little pony. At least when I rode him around. I was literally on top of the world while he carried me through my imaginary world.

Then one dark day came along, yeah that's right my Aunt and Uncle and Cousins and Cracker Jack all moved away to Kellyville and my heart just sank. I thought I would never get to ride him again. I did get a few occasional visits but it just wasn't the same.

Ironically enough a few years later we all moved out the country and we were just a few hundred yards away from the home of Cracker Jack. Unfortunatley his years were numbered and Cracker Jack rode off into that Green Free Range Pasture in the sky. It was a sad time but it didn't last because my dad went out and purchased a 5 year old half quarter horse, half welsh mare we loving called Ol' Babe and dad began my instruction on riding a full sized horse. And many many more memories were created.

It just goes to show ya. No matter how bad life may seem to be, something good is always just around the corner if we can just endure the wait.

God Bless you all this Christmas and all the Cracker Jack's of the world.

Hello again everyone! Well it's December again and "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!" minus the beautiful snow however.

So what's up with that. I'm 40 and I can only remember maybe a handful of white Christmas'. I know were are in the south so-to-speak but were are in the northern south. We need more snow this time of year. I know i'm babbling a little but you know what I mean.

Just a short posting for you all. I want to wish you all a Wonderful Family and Friend filled Thanksgiving. May God Bless you and keep you all.