Street Survivor Mentality In Dickinson, North Dakota Now

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I first came to Dickinson, North Dakota in 2011 during the Oil Boom.  Though there was an extreme shortage of housing, and very high housing prices, there was an atmosphere of excitement and optimism in everyone, property owners, business owners, local workers, out of state workers, and even the vagrants from out of state.

I was absent from Dickinson in 2012, but when I came back to Dickinson in 2013, the excitement and optimism was noticeably gone.  At the Paragon Bowling Alley bar on a Friday or Saturday night back in 2011, there were about 200 people, in 2013 on a Friday or Saturday night there were about 40 people.  At Patterson Lake in the Summer of 2011, there might have been 200 people along the north shore, in 2013 in the Summer there might have been 30 people.

A couple of things that took the excitement out of people in Dickinson, was everyone getting DUIs, no longer being able to drive, losing their job, and becoming broke and unemployable.  For those people who did not get a DUI and lose their job, they realized that working seven days a week, 12 hours per day, was not making them rich, it was only making them pay a shit-ton of income taxes.

As it got to be 2015, and the price of oil fell from over $100 per barrel to $40 per barrel, the Oil Boom was over.  The number of operating oil drill rigs went from over 200, to down to 40.  Everything slowed down as a result, less surveying, less heavy equipment earth work, less trucking, less casing work, less wireline, less tank batteries, less fracking, less sand and water hauling, less need for mechanics, less need for roustabouts, less need for pump jack installation, etcetera.

Dickinson slowed down.  Traffic decreased.  Restaurants, grocery stores, and convenience stores became less busy.  Manufactured home parks, trailer parks, and apartments came to be less and less occupied.  Hotels and motels had more and more vacancies.

Though Dickinson experienced an economic downturn, some of the calming was a relief.  House prices and rents became more affordable.  Local people felt that there was going to be a return to normalcy.  In many ways, everyone was glad to see the “Oil Field Trash go away.”

I probably wrote two hundred blog posts during the time that the Oil Boom was going away.  I wrote about my observations, impressions, and feelings about what was happening.  Of course, what my feelings were, had a lot to do with where I was working, where I was living, and how things were going for me at the time.  Most of the time, things were not going very well for me, which was the case for most out of state workers.

Deep in my mind, despite all of the chaotic things that I was writing about, I thought that Dickinson was going to return to a kind of middle-class, mid-West values, settled, normalcy.  I was wrong about this, and this has kind of been upsetting to me.  To have the fundamental belief that Dickinson was essentially, deep down, good, and to be so wrong about this, makes me kind of sick to my stomach.

Instead of Dickinson returning to a middle-class, mid-West kind of values, Dickinson is returning to a kind of Street Survivor, Prison Life mentality, which I hadn’t known was its true nature.  How was I supposed to know that Dickinson was like this?

During the Oil Boom, I didn’t like going to restaurants in Dickinson because of the “Oil Field Trash”.  Many times in the King Buffet, Perkins, or Bonanza, I was sorry about where I was seated because I didn’t like hearing what the oil field workers were talking about, trying to talk about inappropriate things in order to be funny.

Now, I really, really can’t go anywhere, don’t want to go anywhere, because the local people in Dickinson are so nasty.  What I thought was obnoxious, offensive behavior from the oil field workers, I would gladly go back to that, rather than the scowling, sneering, deep dark hatred of the local people.

I will describe this another way.  I have lived in Dickinson for five years now, and in that time, I have never seen the gentle, mild-mannered, polite, considerate people that I have met in Dickinson, out at dinner.  From 2011 to 2015, I could understand that the few nice people in Dickinson that I met, did not go out at night, because the oil field workers were kind of overbearing.  But once Dickinson slowed down after the oil boom, these few pleasant mild-mannered people in Dickinson did not come out.

Professional people, business people, home owners, business owners, and property owners that I had met during the day, that I thought highly of, and would have enjoyed seeing out at night in Dickinson, I never, ever did see them out in Dickinson, even after the Oil Boom was over.  I wondered why this was.

One of the reasons why I wondered where these nice people that I had met were, was because every time that I went out in Dickinson, the people that were out were so rough, mean, and nasty.  I guess that I am slow to catch on, I could have caught on about a year earlier, the people in Dickinson Are rough, mean, and nasty.

I thought that Dickinson was middle-class, and lower middle-class people, but instead they are more like Street Survivor people or Prison People.

I had made the comment periodically during the past five years of living in Dickinson, that the people in Dickinson would rather hire someone that did four years in prison, instead of a person who did four years in college.  Now I know why this is.

During the Oil Boom that lasted from about 2007 through 2014, there was not a lot of crime or theft in Dickinson, compared to other states.  During 2015 through 2017, after the Oil Boom was over, the crime and theft in Dickinson really picked up, the theft in Dickinson now, is the worst of any place that I have ever lived.  I attributed this to people losing their jobs, and people needing money.  Now, I am beginning to think, and to see, that this is the local people.

I just don’t know how this happened, or why this would be the case, that the people in Dickinson are more like Street Survivor people or Prison Life people.  Knowing this, and looking around at local businesses, local government, and how things are done in Dickinson, this all starts to make more sense now.

Simple-Minded Behavior About The Value Of Things In North Dakota

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I have had this happen to me many times in North Dakota, where I am kind of amazed at the simple-mindedness of people about the value of things.  I can’t really find the right words to express this, other than simple-minded, primitive, or child-like.

To begin describing this, I want to use the example of what I have seen on the television show “Pawn Stars”.  There is a large Pawn Shop located in Las Vegas, owned by Rick Harrison and his father Richard Harrison.  Throughout the day, people bring in items to try to sell to Rick.  On this television show, I have seen the same situation happen many times.  A person will bring in an autographed baseball, photograph, or document, and explain to the Pawn Shop owner Rick, about the famous person who signed it, when and how this happened, and how they acquired it.  Rick will ask how much they want to sell it for, and they might say $3,000.

Rick will reply, the value of this thing, is really in the signature being genuine, do you mind if I telephone a friend of mine who is a signature expert, who can authenticate this signature?  When the signature expert arrives, sometimes, he will say that this is a very nice piece, and actually quite rare, “I can definitely authenticate this signature, and I would say that this might sell at auction for $8,000 to $10,000.”

Rick would then say to the person, how much do you want for this item now?  The simple-minded, primitive, child-like people, say $10,000.  Rick then explains, “Look, the expert said that this might, might, sell at auction for $8,000 to $10,000, you never know what something will sell for at auction, there is no guarantee.  If I buy this item, I have to make a profit on it, and something like this might sit around here for quite a while before it sells, not many people come in here with that kind of money to spend on something like this.  The most I can give you is $5,000.”

To the simple-minded, primitive, child-like people, they can not see the absurdity in this situation, that the item they would have been happy to sell for $3,000 one hour ago, they are now refusing to sell this same item for $5,000.  Thanks to the help and honesty of a knowledgeable person, they discover that the item is worth much more money, and now they are unwilling to part with it.  However, they still have this item, no one to sell it to, and they still need money.

I used this example of what frequently happens on the television show “Pawn Stars”, to begin to explain, that people left on their own, have a view or an idea about how much something is worth, but then when you begin to discuss what they might sell it for, and begin to discuss with them its merits, possibilities, or uses, just the mere suggestion of possibilities to a primitive or child-like mind, makes something they own, grow enormously in price.

There is a recent incident that happened to me, that caused me to want to write this blog post, where something of no use or value to anyone, once I expressed an interest in it, it suddenly became very valuable.  But first, I want to describe a similar situation that will help to explain this most recent one.

I like cars, I read about cars, I do research on cars, I study certain cars, and I understand certain things about particular cars, that most people don’t know.  I look at cars for sale on internet classified ads, salvaged-title car auctions, printed publication car ads, parked cars for sale, and parked cars that are no longer being driven.  Sometimes, I like to talk to car owners about cars that I am interested in, to see what kinds of problems they have had with their cars, so that I know more.

A couple of years ago, on Bis-Man internet classifieds, I kept seeing a red 1987 Porsche 924 up for sale for about $3,000.  This was very interesting to me, because this ad kept getting renewed because this car hadn’t sold and no one wanted it, though the price was low, which indicated to me that no one knew what this car was.

I like Porsche 924, I have one. There are many things that people don’t know about them, all most people think that they know, is that they are slow.  They stopped making Porsche 924 in approximately 1983.  Whenever you see a Porsche 924 for the years 1986 and 1987, it is not a 924, it is a left-over 924 body that the Porsche factory put a 944 engine in. The Porsche factory called these cars 924″S”, they are fairly rare, and faster than 944 cars because they are smaller and lighter.  They will be collector cars very soon.

I called the car owner who posted this advertisement on Bis-Man.  Though he had re-posted this advertisement several times for about a year, he said that I was only the second person ever to have called about this car.  I asked him about this car, and he said that it was in good condition, no body damage, good paint, with not that many miles on it.

Then I explained to him what this car was, with a 944 engine, which he had not fully understood.  I did not want this person to be unaware of what he had, apparently no one in North Dakota knew what this car was.  I was so positive and enthusiastic in my explanation about the merits of this car, that he didn’t want to sell it anymore and he took the ad off of Bis-Man.  This was fine with me, I was glad that he had a new appreciation for this car, and he knew that it was worth more.

I don’t mind losing the opportunity to buy a car, once I have had an honest discussion with the owner about their car, explained why I am interested in it, and what I think the car could be worth.  I don’t want to take advantage of someone in a car sale, and later have to deal with a lawsuit or disputed ownership and title.

I also want to talk with the owner to find out what they know about their car and what they think of their car, so that I don’t insult them with too low an offer.  Many times, I have had to admit that I can’t even make them an offer because it is no where near what they would want.

In other words, I don’t try to convince women and the elderly that a $10K, $20K, …$80K old car is worth only $500 or $1,000.  And I have found some very valuable old cars.  I never even heard of a Porsche 912 until I found a 1968 model in the weeds beside a closed restaurant in Idaho.  I never even heard of a Porsche 911 “Sportomatic” until I found a 1970 model under a tarp in a garage in Idaho.

I was angry today, because a vehicle purchase that I wanted to make, was ruined by what I felt was simple-minded, primitive, child-like behavior.  This past summer, I was working on a road construction project in a rural area far outside of Dickinson.  The highway that I was working on, passed by an old abandoned farm house outside of a very small town.  There were old, beat-up, abandoned vehicles on the property.  However, I recognized one 30 year old vehicle, as being a good one, though nothing about it would make it stand out to anyone else.

I thought about this vehicle from time to time through September, October, November, and December.  In November, I stopped at the gas station in the small town near the old farm house, to ask who owned the abandoned farm, I wanted to contact the owner about a vehicle on the property.  I was given the name of the property owner.

Several days after learning the name of the property owner, I asked an old contractor from the area, if he knew this man.  The old contractor said that he did, and he gave me his phone number.  I called this number twice, but I did not leave a voice mail message because I wanted to talk to the property owner, in order to gauge what his feelings were about my offer to buy this vehicle.

Several days ago, the contractor who gave me the property owner’s phone number, asked me if I had had any luck buying the vehicle.  I said no, I called him a couple of times, but I didn’t leave him a message.  I said to the contractor, I wouldn’t be able to buy this vehicle for a couple of months anyway, I had so many bills due right around the first of the year.

I asked this contractor if he was interested in buying this vehicle, and he said no.  I explained to the contractor several reasons why this was a good vehicle.  The next day, I called the property owner again, this time it appeared as though his Meth-addict teen-aged children were in the home alone, and I couldn’t even get them to answer me one way or the other if this was his home.

Today, I drove by this abandoned farm house, and the vehicle that I wanted was gone.  I would have tried to offer about $500 to $600 for it, because it was a parked and abandoned in a field.  In this area, if the owner would have placed an advertisement in the newspaper, offering this vehicle for $1,000, I don’t think that anyone would have bought it, because there would have been no interest in it.

This vehicle would have just continued to sit there, for ever, had I not said anything about it.  However, once I went through the trouble of finding out who owned the property, trying to call him, and someone found out that I was interested in this vehicle, it went from something that no one noticed and no one wanted, to something somebody had to try to get immediately before I could get it.  This vehicle had no value to anyone, until I wanted it, then it became highly sought after.

We Could Have A James Bond Movie “Prime Meridian” Right Here In North Dakota

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Thirty miles west of Dickinson, North Dakota, just outside of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the Meridian Energy Group is planning to build an oil refinery, called the
“Davis Refinery”.

Some environmentalists, residents, and landowners do not want a refinery to be built so close to the National Park.  Some people don’t care either way.  Some people think that this would be wonderful because of the jobs that would be created and the boost to the local economy that would occur.

Not all aspects of the permitting process for the Davis Refinery have been going quickly or smoothly.  The Air Quality Permit review process conducted by the North Dakota Department of Health looks like it is going to end up taking more than a year to complete.  One other possible hold up, could have been the “Siting Permit”.

In North Dakota, if a refinery is expected to have the production capacity of 50,000 barrels per day or more, a “Siting Permit” is required.  The Siting Permit review process is conducted by the North Dakota Public Service Commission.  Part of this permit review process involves public input, at public hearings.

In order for the Davis Refinery project to not have any further delays due to permitting, the refinery developer, Meridian Energy Group, has decided to set its refinery production capacity at 27,500 barrels per day, thus avoiding the requirement for a “Siting Permit” and review by the North Dakota Public Service Commission.

A recent Dickinson Press newspaper article dated December 19, 2017, features a headline photograph of Meridian Energy Group CEO, William Prentice.  William Prentice voluntarily attended a public information gathering meeting at the State Capitol Building in Bismarck, where North Dakota Public Service Commission members asked him questions.

From the photograph of William Prentice, CEO of Meridian Energy Group, and his smooth, polished, measured, and calculated answers to questions, he kind of reminded me of a villain out of a James Bond movie.

At first, I was thinking that William Prentice reminded me of the character “Mr. White” in the James Bond films “Casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace”.  He does, he does remind me of “Mr. White”, but there was one other character that he reminded me of.

I had to think for a while, but the movie villain who William Prentice most reminds me of, is the character “Victor Maitland” from the the 1984 movie “Beverly Hills Cop”.  This actor who played “Victor Maitlalnd”, also played the James Bond villain “General Orlov” in the 1983 movie “Octopussy”.

Here is a quote from the character “Victor Maitland”:

“Now listen to me, my tough little friend.  I don’t know from under what stone you crawled, or where you get these ridiculous ideas about me, but it seems painfully obvious you haven’t the slightest fucking idea who you’re dealing with.  Now, my advice to you is crawl back to your little stone in Detroit, before you get squashed.  Okay?”

Just for fun, it would have been funny to see William Prentice recite the above paragraph in response to one of the questions from the Public Service Commission at the public meeting in Bismarck at the Capitol.  Not only would it have been funny, maybe they would quit holding up his permits.

Anyway, since we have got William Prentice in this area now, we can have our own James Bond movie.  A working title for this movie is “Prime Meridian” though I don’t know if this will be the final title in the end.

Since I am involved in writing, casting, location, filming, production, and budget, in order to save time and money, I am going to enlist actual real people to play many of the parts, and incorporate actual real places in the scenes.

William Prentice can play the role of  “Mr. White”, part of the secretive organization Quantum, as well as a high ranking member of the Spectre organization.

Ordinarily, I would have had a hard time writing some plot scenario where agent 007 James Bond would come to Belfield, or even Dickinson, however, once British Intelligence MI5 finds out that “Mr. White” is building a refinery, the Davis Refinery, James Bond will certainly need to come to western North Dakota.

An essential part of any James Bond movie, are the “Bond Girls” and “Femme Fatales”.  Upon mentally reviewing my blog post “List Of Attractive Women In Dickinson”, which I continually update, I am relieved to say that I have enough attractive and alluring women.

I have thought this all out, and in order for this movie to be a success, some of the women on my list of attractive women, are really going to have to make some of these scenes memorable and unforgettable.  This starts, by not being difficult, if this is at all possible.  This means, not complaining about the writing and the scenes that I am putting you in.

I will tell more about what is going to happen in future blog posts.

 

I Didn’t Like What I Was Reading About The Civil Service Commission In Dickinson, North Dakota

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My previous two blog posts were about the disputed termination of former Dickinson Street Maintenance manager David Armendariz and his hearing with the Civil Service Commission.  In a second article by the Dickinson Press from December 12 about the deliberation and finding of the Civil Service Commission, it concluded that there was nothing wrong with the City of Dickinson’s termination of David Armendariz.

This finding of the Civil Service Commission made me wonder, would the Civil Service Commission ever disagree with what the City of Dickinson does?  Who are the members of the Civil Service Commission, and how are they appointed?

I have seen many times in my life, where an individual has the mistaken belief that a company or an organization will do what is right, be a fair arbiter of fact, adhere to some kind of ethics, or do what they said they were going to do.  Some companies and organizations have a methodology of stating and appearing that they will act in good faith, but proceed to delay, waste time with formality and processes, dilute facts, disregard evidence, introduce doubt, create ambiguity, with the intention of finding in the end, whatever suited their interests.

To give an example, I have read more than several newspaper articles where an individual claimed that an Electric Company, Water Company, or Gas Company removed all of the money from the individual’s bank account through an auto-pay billing or debit card transaction, due to a supposed $10,000 charge.  Here is how Electric Companies, Water Companies, and Gas Companies handle this type of dispute by a customer:

Dear Mr. Smith,

We have investigated the matter concerning your belief that you were incorrectly charged for services.  We have conducted a review of all pertinent information and examined our records.  We can find no error in billing on our part, and the charges are correct.

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

Yours Truly,

Asshole at the Electric Company

The reason that I have read more than several of these stories in the newspaper, is because the only way that these individuals were able to get their money back, was by going to a television station or newspaper and getting a reporter to go to the Electric Company, Water Company, or Gas Company and begin investigating for their news story.  At that time, when the Electric Company, Water Company, or Gas Company management learned that everything was going to be exposed, which might lead to them losing their job, they always gave the money back and issued the following statement:

“There has been a misunderstanding, which has now been addressed and resolved with Mr. Smith.”

I could go on with more stories about people mistakenly believing that a company or an organization was going to be a fair arbiter of fact, but I won’t.  The point that I want to make is this, I don’t know why any individual in Dickinson would think that they were going to get anywhere with the Civil Service Commission based on the history of outcomes.  Why even bother.

One way that the Civil Service Commission benefits the City of Dickinson, is that individuals never get anywhere, their claims are denied.  Not only are the individual’s claims denied, but the City of Dickinson doesn’t even have to pay an attorney to accomplish this.

From now on, if any employee of the City of Dickinson feels like they were unjustly or unfairly treated, hire an attorney, sue the City of Dickinson.  Don’t even waste your time going to the Civil Service Commission.

Once the City of Dickinson has to litigate again, and again, and again, then you might start to see some real change in personnel and practices with the City of Dickinson.

David Armendariz’s Rejection Of Reclaimed Concrete For Road Material

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In my previous blog post, I wrote about former Dickinson Street Maintenance manager David Armendariz’s hearing before the Civil Service Commission regarding his dismissal.  At this hearing, David Armendariz said that he believed that he was terminated, because he refused to accept and approve reclaimed concrete for use in road construction instead of the “Class V” material that was specified.

I can see what David was trying to accomplish by rejecting the reclaimed concrete as a substitute for “Class V” material.  In part, David might have been wrong, but I don’t know if anybody knows why, so I will try to explain this.

I received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, not Civil Engineering.  I worked as an estimator, superintendent, project manager, inspector, and engineer on many types of projects.  I was certified by the Arizona Department of Transportation as an inspector, and I was certified as a nuclear density gauge operator to test density, a.k.a “compaction”.

In my career, very early on, I experienced my company owner, other company owners, and project owners, trying to get me to do something that was not right, to sign off on, approve, allow, cover up, or participate in work that was faulty, failing, deficient, or substandard.  I had to think about, who was this going to harm, who was this going to endanger, what are the possible consequences, and who would take the blame for this?

I realized that in just about every case, should the deficiency be discovered, should the work fail, should someone become hurt, the person who asked me to bend or break the rules would be saying, “I don’t know anything about it, you need to talk to that engineer who inspected it, signed off on it, and said that everything was O.K.”

David Armendariz did not want to accept reclaimed concrete as a substitute for “Class V” material, even if the Dickinson Public Works Director told him verbally that this was O.K., because David knew that if anything wrong happened later, he would be the one to take the blame, because he was the one who approved it and allowed it to be used.

David Armendariz also said that he did not want to use the reclaimed concrete because it did not compact.  I know exactly what David Armendariz was talking about when he said this.  If you have ever received a load of clean washed gravel at a jobsite, that has stones all the same size, with no fine material, running a compactor over this, is like running a compactor over marbles, everything just vibrates and it doesn’t compact.  You could look at a batch of reclaimed concrete, with no fines, and think that this is going to be like trying to compact a bunch of marbles.

The governing authority on road construction in North Dakota, is the North Dakota Department of Transportation Standard Specification For Road And Bridge Construction specification book.  This book published by the ND DOT, is 590 pages in length.  You can look it up on the internet, and read all 590 pages.

I found the sections of this ND DOT specification book, that state that reclaimed concrete is an allowable substitute for any class of aggregate specified for road base, however, this reclaimed concrete still has a gradation requirement:

From the ND DOT SSRBC:

SECTION 302, AGGREGATE BASE AND SURFACE COURSE

302.03 MATERIALS

When the Plans specify a class of aggregate for the base, the Contractor may substitute Salvaged Base Course that meets Section 817, “Salvaged Base Course.”

 

SECTION 817, SALVAGED BASE COURSE

E. Salvage Base Course Containing Concrete Material.
Salvaged base course may be up to 100 percent concrete material.

B. Salvaged Base Course Gradation.
Sieve Size           Percent Passing
1-1/2 inch           100
1 inch                  90 – 100
No. 4                    35 – 85
No. 30                 16 – 50
No. 200               0.0 – 12.0

To be clear, the ND DOT SSRBC says that when the plans specify a class of aggregate for the base, the contractor may substitute salvaged base course that meets the requirement of section 817.  Section 817 says that the salvaged base course may be up to 100% concrete material, however section 817 also has a gradation requirement for the material.  100% of the material must pass through a 1-1/2″ sieve, 90% to 100% of the material must pass through a 1″ sieve, 35%-85% through a No. 4 sieve and so on.

I can understand David Armendariz trying to not accept reclaimed concrete that did not appear to have the required mix of material sizes, but the ND DOT SSRBC does allow reclaimed concrete to be substituted for aggregate used as base material.

Too bad nobody got out the ND DOT Standard Specifications For Road And Bridge Construction specification book, like a year ago.  But it is hard to read, in sections that refer to sections that refer to sections.

The Disputed Termination Of David Armendariz In Dickinson, North Dakota

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David Armendariz was hired as the City of Dickinson street maintenance manager in February of 2016.

In the summer of 2017, I was working on a project in Dickinson, when David Armendariz came up to me and introduced himself to me.  He was interested in what my thoughts were on a particular problem with a street that he was responsible for maintaining.

I was surprised that he was taking the time to ask me.  It was obvious that he was genuinely concerned about what was occurring with this street, though the impact of what we were doing would have only a minor effect.  But still, his professionalism and the time that he took to stop and become informed on what was going on, made a good impression with me.

I was surprised at first, when I read a Dickinson Press newspaper article from December 12, 2017 titled, “Former streets manager disputes termination”.  I was surprised at first, but within less than one minute, I was not surprised.  Having met David Armendariz, and remembering the positive impression that he had made with me, as someone who was professional and concerned about doing a good job, it was not a surprise that Dickinson was firing someone like this, because Dickinson, North Dakota, is backwards, messed up, and sometimes corrupt.

Before I even began to read the details in the Dickinson Press newspaper article about the disputed termination, I felt that this whole situation was very bad.  A City of Dickinson employee feeling that they were so unjustly and unfairly treated by the City of Dickinson, that they filed a formal complaint and requested a hearing with the Civil Service Commission.  From the kind of person that I believed David Armendariz to be, no nonsense and professional, I believed that there must have been something not right going on.

After I had read this entire Dickinson Press newspaper article about the hearing before the three-person Civil Service Commission, the facts that appeared to support David Armendariz were as follows:

  1. David claimed that the City of Dickinson Public Works director had pressured him to allow and approve the use of reclaimed concrete for road projects instead of the “Class V” material that was specified.  David said that he would not approve the use of reclaimed concrete because it did not compact.  The Public Works director argued with him, saying that the City of Dickinson had often used reclaimed concrete in place of “Class V” material, and that “Class V” material was hard to get.  David believed that his refusal to do what the Public Works director wanted, led to his dismissal.  ( I will write a second blog post article about this, to explain why this is significant.)
  2.  As many as seven current and former City of Dickinson Street Department employees appeared at the Civil Service Commission hearing and testified on behalf of David Armendariz, stating that he was a good manager and professional, and that the Street Department did have a culture and history of division.

When I read that as many as seven current and former employees of the City of Dickinson Street Department testified on behalf of David Armendariz at his hearing, and when I read what they were quoted as saying, this explained everything to me.  Especially in Dickinson, co-workers tend to keep their mouth shut in situations where someone has a conflict with management, because they don’t want to jeopardize their own jobs.

The fact that David Armendariz was not from Dickinson, and had only been the street maintenance manager for a little over 1-1/2 years, and so many co-workers were willing to come to a hearing and give testimony on his behalf, tells me that he must have been held in very high regard by his co-workers.  The people who worked with David on a daily basis, felt that he did a good job, and did not find fault with him.

It appeared to me that the City of Dickinson Public Works Director did not like David Armendariz, wanted him gone, and began the process of creating the paperwork in order to have a legal and legally defensible termination.  The Public Works Director had the following complaints against David Armendariz:

  1. Failure to track incoming calls.
  2. Failure to properly code invoices.
  3. Because of #1 and #2, it appears that the Public Works Director wanted to claim that David did not understand the computer software, David did not know how to use computers, David had insufficient job knowledge, David did not meet department expectations, David received four disciplinary actions including three written warnings.

The only specific things that it was claimed that David failed to do, was track incoming calls, and properly code invoices.  All of the other allegations, seemed to be unsubstantiated general claims of “insufficient job knowledge”, “not meeting department expectations”, and “substandard work performance”.

From having worked for different companies for 30 years, if anyone ever hands an employee a written warning or a “work improvement plan”, that employee had better start looking for another job, because this is the beginning of the end for him or her.  The reason that I say this, is because if an employee is liked, a supervisor or co-worker will gladly work with them on something that they are not good at or knowledgeable about, without any negativity involved, or any need for a supervisor to document “substandard work performance”.

Another way to state this is, if a company plans on keeping an employee, they don’t start pulling out written warning sheets and work improvement plans.  These documents are only needed in legal defense for an upcoming termination.

Also, from having worked for different companies for 30 years, if you are a street department manager, and the worst thing that you have done is improperly code invoices and not track incoming phone calls, this is not a big deal.

What is a big deal, is the failure of the Public Works Department to properly inspect the construction of the four-lane concrete Roers’ Road which in now collapsing, and the failure of the Public Works Department to notice that the new water tower was constructed 70′ too high and water could not be pumped into it.  These two examples, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to correct, are examples of things that someone might be fired for.

The three-person Civil Service Commission that heard David Armendariz’s appeal of his termination, I am not sure that they are not primarily looking out for the interests of the City of Dickinson.  Who appointed the members of the Civil Service Commission?  Are they always people whose backgrounds, careers, and work experience would make them likely to have allegiance to City government?

Could any employee appearing before the Civil Service Commission ever expect to receive a decision different than what the City government has already decided?  Is this commission just a tactic to try to diffuse an employees’ attempt at legal recourse?

In my next blog post, I will explain the significance of not going along with other people’s requests to deviate from specification requirements.

Facebook Has Got To Stop Its Dictatorship

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One of the worst organizations that I have seen in my lifetime is Facebook.  Because Facebook was convenient and easy to use, people from around the world enjoyed uploading photographs and chatting with each other on Facebook.

However, once Facebook became popular, with many people becoming accustomed to using it and relying on it, Facebook began to no longer be user friendly, and it started to become a Dictatorship.

When I say that people came to rely on Facebook, I mean that people came to rely on Facebook just like people had become dependent on the U.S. Postal service, the telephone, and e-mail.  Let me give some examples.

Poor people, from poor countries, like Haiti, Kenya, The Republic of Congo, could maintain contact with their families thousands of miles away through Facebook.  People living in oppressive countries like Afghanistan, could keep in contact with their family members who had moved abroad.

Eldery, handicapped, and isolated people could chat with friends and relatives throughout the day so that they were not alone.

In return for people using Facebook and becoming reliant on it, Facebook is now acting like, “You will do whatever we tell you to do.”

In the past, I had one fake Facebook profile for about seven years.  I wanted to look up friends, relatives, and classmates on Facebook to see what they were doing, but I was not ready to engage with everyone that I looked up.  I looked up employers, business associates, and people that I had had interaction with, in order to find out more about them.  But, I did not want to be friends with everyone that I looked up.

About one year ago, Facebook suspended my one fake profile that I had had for seven years, due to one complaint.  At that time, I explained to Facebook, several reasons why I needed that fake account.  Facebook disregarded all of my reasons, though I felt that my reasons were just as valid as Facebook’s accepted reasons, one of them being that an individual was LGBT and feared reprisal.

About five weeks ago, Facebook kept showing a young lady from Pennsylvania named Maddie Gower in my list of “People You May Know”.  Maddie Gower was very beautiful, and I could not resist looking at her Facebook profile.  After a couple of weeks, I came to believe that Maddie Gower of Pennsylvania was probably the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen.

I knew that Maddie Gower would probably become extremely angry with me, if I contacted her to warn her that she was not keeping enough details about herself private,  and that this was not safe.  I created a fake Facebook profile to contact her and warn her, and thank God that I did, because she was very angry and her followers were very angry, even more angry than I anticipated.

My fake Facebook profile was quickly suspended by Facebook, and everything that I had written to her warning her and explaining to her why it was so unsafe to give too many details, all of this just disappeared and was gone.

After Maddie and her followers had settled down, Maddie Gower’s profile kept disappearing from Facebook.  When her Facebook profile would return after several days, all of her friends and followers would wonder and ask what had happened.

Today, Maddie informed her friends and followers, that Facebook had suspended her profile three times in the past two weeks for being “Fake”.  She had contacted Facebook each time her account was suspended, and e-mailed Facebook a copy of her photo identification, but her account was suspended a second, and then a third time.

It appears that some angry, jealous, vindictive person, keeps reporting that Maddie Gower’s profile is fake, and Facebook takes down her profile each time.  Not only does this make Maddie angry, this makes her friends, and her 2,000 followers angry.

For a very large organization, that is supposed to have a larger market capitalization than General Motors, Facebook is acting very incompetent, ignorant, backwards, arbitrary, and is headed down the road of being one of the most hated companies in the world, with a “Too Big To Fail” mentality.

Now that I think about it, Southern Bell telephone was broken up because the government believed that it had a monopoly.  I will begin writing that Facebook should be broken up, because it has too much of a monopoly.

Cameron’s Computers In Dickinson, North Dakota

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The first laptop computer that I owned, was a Compaq Preserio that I bought in 1999 for $2,400.  The company that I was working for agreed to pay for 1/2 the cost of this computer, because I needed it for work.

This was a very good, high quality computer, that I still have to this day, in perfect condition.  I use it to watch DVDs.  It has a 500 MHz processor, and the operating system is Microsoft Windows 98.

In 2007, I purchased an Acer Aspire 5100 laptop on-sale at Best Buy for $500.  I needed to get an updated laptop in order to have one with a built-in wireless adapter, so that I could access the internet at restaurants, cafes, and hotels.  This Acer laptop had a 1.4 GHz processor and it came with Microsoft Windows Vista as the operating system.

This Acer laptop was nothing but trouble the whole time that I had it.  It was very slow to boot up, the wireless adapter seemed to always have problems connecting, the computer would lock up, and the battery never allowed very much operating time.  Whenever I went to a public place to try to connect to the internet with this Acer laptop, it was always a battle.

In 2013, I was living in Dickinson, North Dakota, and I was looking to buy some equipment for my self-employment work, when I met Cameron Loffelmacher.  Cameron is in his late 50s, and he goes to auctions to buy equipment and tools:  pumps, motors, generators, compressors, air tanks, gang boxes, truck tool boxes, trailers, and vehicles.  But he also buys computers.

After Cameron showed me some of the equipment that he had, he started talking about and showing me some of the computers that he had:  laptops, tablets, desktops, monitors, keyboards, and hard drives.  He sold me the cheapest laptop that he had for $40, explaining that this laptop was pretty much mostly good for going on the internet.

This generic brand laptop computer that I bought from Cameron in 2013 worked O.K. for getting on the internet, but later in 2014, I needed a better laptop for producing work schedules and creating documents.  I went back to Cameron’s, and he had a very good business grade Dell laptop computer that he sold to me for about $120.

This Dell laptop was very heavy-duty because it was for business use.  It was not damaged, dinged, or scratched in any way.  Cameron had bought it an auction, and he told me that it had come from the University system in North Dakota.  I can’t remember if the processor was 1.5 GHz or 2 GHz, and I believe that the operating system was Microsoft Windows 7.  This was the best, fastest, and most reliable computer that I had owned so far.

I used this Dell laptop for two years without any problems, it worked great.  But, I had always kept the power cord plugged in, and I never used the battery.  Because I had not routinely allowed the battery to go through discharge and recharge cycles, I ruined the battery.  I had no operating time at all with this battery.  I bought a new Dell battery, but this new battery would not charge because I did not have a Dell inverter power cable.

In 2016, I was working out of town every week, and I wanted a laptop computer that I could use in hotels and restaurants, not just to access the internet, but to create schedules, documents, and to watch movies after work.  Cameron had a very, very nice HP Pavilion laptop, which he sold to me for about $140.

This was the best laptop that I had ever owned.  It was so quick to boot up, so quick to access the internet, there was no lag time in watching movies, it had several hours of operating time on its batteries, it had Microsoft Windows 10 as its operating system, it was just flawless.  This HP Pavilion laptop was so good, that I was scared to take it anywhere.

In 2016, I bought a Microsoft Surface tablet from Cameron for $100.  For those of you who don’t know what this is, its dimensions are approximately 12″x 9″ and 1/4″ thick, and it weighs about one pound.  It is a computer, and its surface is entirely a touch screen.  At first, this technology was unbelievable to me and other people.  How could this thing, take photographs, video record with sound, play video, play movies, access the internet, and do everything that a computer could?  After about six months, it was a pain in the ass to type using the touch screen keyboard, and it lost its appeal.

Many people are mad at me, and you just can’t tell what anyone will do in North Dakota now, so I wasn’t about to take my HP Pavilion laptop to a library, diner, or truck stop and let it sit there on a table, where I might get up to go do something.

Just for a “beater” laptop, at the end of 2017, I bought an older heavily used Toshiba laptop from Cameron for $100.  He had replaced the processor, and installed Microsoft Windows 10 as the operating system.  This Toshiba is pretty quick, it has about two hours of operating time on its battery, but the letter “Z” key does not work, and the “?” key does not work.

This Toshiba laptop is perfect for using in public places.  When I have to get up and get something to eat or drink, or go to the bathroom, I just shut the cover so that I am logged out, and I walk away without worrying too much about someone taking it or damaging it.

The Acer Aspire 5100 laptop that I bought in 2007 from Best Buy for $500, that was the worst computer that I ever owned, I took it to Cameron this week to see what he could do with it.  We both agreed that we needed to get rid of Microsoft Vista as the operating system.  But with only 1 Gigabyte of RAM, Cameron said that I would not be able to load Microsoft Windows 10 onto it.

I was having a very hard time saving my Documents folder from this Acer laptop to disk.  I accomplished this just before this Acer locked up and crashed repeatedly.  Cameron and I looked at this laptop computer, and it was done, it would not even stay on.  We tried removing the battery, and using a different power inverter, but nothing helped.  I told Cameron that he could have this Acer laptop, because we worked on it for about one hour and could not determine everything that was wrong with it.  Cameron removed the hard drive from this laptop, and wiped it a using a magnetic device that reads and wipes data from hard drives.

The following day I returned to Cameron’s to pick up an aluminum truck bed tool box that he sold to me for about half of what they cost new.  He had my old Acer Aspire 5100 laptop taken apart, but it was running very well.  He was using an external fan to cool it, and an external Lennox operating system.

The Acer laptop had had a bad fan, which was causing the computer to overheat and shut down.  He had added more RAM, which had greatly increased the processing speed.  This laptop was now playing movies from the internet without any lag or pause.  Cameron had found that he could order a new fan for about $10, a new generic battery for about $12, and a lot more RAM for about $10.  Doing this, would allow this old computer to be updated to the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system.  He offered to do this and sell this computer back to me for not very much.

I am writing this blog post to recommend Cameron for desktop and laptop computer repair, and for consultation on what you can do with your old desktop and laptop computers.  Can you replace hard drives, processors, RAM, and other components, and have a greatly improved computer?

Do Not throw away your old laptop computer!  Believe it or not, laptop computers are fished out of the garbage.  Cameron will accept your old laptop computer that you do not want, and remove the hard drive right in front of you, give it back to you, or magnetically wipe it.

Cameron does not charge a lot of money, because he does not have to pay for a downtown office space or employees, it is just him.  He can be reached by telephone at 701-290-6655, or by e-mail at ndkid77@gmail.com.

Tales Of Womanising

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There is a Preface and an Introduction immediately preceding this blog post on Tales of Womanising.  I have already written and described in these preceding blog posts, that the men who have notoriety as Womanisers, have to have extra money, time, and flexibility in their schedules in order to chase women.  They must be good salesmen with the ladies, and have a schedule and routine for making sales calls. They must also be men of daring, and have fearlessness.

One of the special qualities of the men Womanisers that I knew, was their extraordinary daring, risk taking, and fearlessness.  Not only did they have notoriety as Womanisers, but they all had local fame for their daring and incredible adventures.

Below is the cast of players, and some of what they were famous for, though I can’t use their full names at this time, or mention everything they were known for:

⦁ Jeff – Diver and Sailor.  Diving, spearing fish as big as himself, and swimming back nearly a mile dragging great big bleeding fish through shark infested water.  Could climb all the way to the top of sail boat masts using only the small diameter cable side-stays.

⦁ John – Very good Pilot, Hunter, and Fisherman.  Long distance cross country flying, just fly low and read the road signs when you want to know where you are.  With only a keg of beer, took a 17 foot boat 200 miles through the Atlantic Ocean to reach the Bahama islands.

⦁ Steve – Astronomer, Chemist, Appraisor, Sailor.  Rode his bicycle 200 miles to Tampa in 24 hours while drunk following a bar bet.  Sailed around the world on small vessels.

⦁ Pat – Salesman, Pilot, Diver, Sailor.  Always discovering something like a 3 foot long lobster or sunken German U-boat, or being involved in some elaborate adventure gone wrong, often in foreign countries.

⦁ Dick – Poor Hippie turned Millionaire and Pilot.  Went from living in an old beat up singe-wide trailer to having many multi-million dollar properties from using only his mental insight.

⦁ Marty – Surfer, Sailor, Appraisor.  Always willing to go out on the Atlantic Ocean on any kind of too small and unsafe boat.  Usually an accomplice to someone else on this list.

⦁ Captain – Surveyor and Captain.  Often the Captain of questionable vessels that had sunk.  Master mind of schemes that anyone would wonder how this ever happened.

I will stop with this list now, if I went on, it would include Dave, David, Bruce, Bill, Carl, Mike, Charlie, and some more that I can’t remember.  Most of these men were self-employed or worked independently.

There were all kinds of occaisions and opportunities for all of these people to get together during the week and on the weekends, to talk about what everyone was doing or what they were involved in.  These people, my father, their other friends, and my family, found it entertaining and hilarious, the stupid shit that everyone had done or gotten into.  My father, mother, and sister probably enjoyed hearing about this more than I did.

You might think, that the wives, daughters, and girlfriends would not like hearing these stories about what these men had done, but they probably liked these stories more than anyone, so long as it wasn’t about their husband or boyfriend.  Some of my family’s favorite tales of Womanising, involved Pat or John.  Pat and John were both likable, and their wives were fairly normal women, that we also liked.  The only thing that I will say about Pat and John’s wives, was that they were uptight, and they no longer enjoyed doing things.

This is something that I have seen throughout my life, men who love to sail, fly, hunt, fish, and scuba dive, meet women that also seem to enjoy these activities.  However, once they become married to these women who appeared to like doing things, not long after becoming married, these women no longer wanted to leave their homes or go anywhere.

Pat and John were not about to quit sailing, flying, hunting, fishing, and diving, so they found women who wanted to do these things with them.  Their wives just wanted to stay home in their kitchens, not wanting to go anywhere, being uptight, and kind of bitchy.  This fact, probably made these Womanising stories even funnier to everyone, because the wives just wanted to stay home and not go anywhere.

Pat had a 50′ motor-sailer yacht.  The difference between a motor-sailer and a sailboat, is that a motor-sailer has a completely enclosed pilot-house, where you are completely protected from the weather.  Also, they have larger engines because they are meant to be run only on engines for long periods of time.

This motor-sailer yacht was very luxurious and spacious in comparison to most sailboats.  The salon was probably 12′ wide x 20′ long, with 10′ tall ceilings.  The boat had a very heavy and wide wooden hull, the decks were wood, and the pilot house , cabins, and rail were trimmed with teak wood.  It was a very beautiful boat.

But as beautiful and luxurious as this yacht was, Pat’s wife did not want to go out on it.  Nor did his wife want to fly in his airplane.  This was a problem, yet it was easily solved.  There were many women who did want to go sailing with Pat or flying with Pat.

One of the favorite destinations for all of the daring and adventurous people, were the out-islands of the Bahamas.  The Bahamas are a group of islands in the Atalantic Ocean that lay off the east coast of Florida.  They had been a colony of Great Britain, until they were granted independence to form their own sovereign country in 1972.

The west islands of the Bahamas, the ones closest to Florida, had mostly Black inhabitants, whose ancestors had been slaves.  The far east islands of the Bahamas had mostly white inhabitants, whose ancestors had fled the American Colonies during the American Revolutionary War in the 1770s.

The vast majority of the several thousand islands that make up the Bahamas, are uninhabited.  These islands, back in the 1970s, that were only accessible by cruising sailboats and yachts, were one of the few remaining places on Earth where people could enjoy day after day of doing whatever they wanted without interruption or invasion of privacy.

Every one of the Womanisers on my list in this blog post, would do whatever they could to get to the Bahamas as often as they could.  If they were travelling by boat, they would stop in at some of the west islands in the Bahamas, like Bimini or Freeport, in order to get supplies, and to pick up Black women.

All of the Womanisers’ wives or girlfriends, their imaginations and jealousy were driving them out of their minds, because they were sure that their husbands or boyfriends were in Bimini or Freeport trying to pick up Black women.  Which of course they were.

The young, attractive, care-free Black women who worked in the shops and offices in Bimini and Freeport, thought that it was fun to be so aggressively pursued by some White man acting a fool and out of his mind.  It was funny and entertaining to them, to be on a yacht making love to some married man whose wife would kill him if she found out.

After leaving Bimini or Freeport and sailing east through the very shallow reef infested waters towards the Abacco islands, the Womanisers would make plans to get one of their girlfriends back in Florida to come down to meet them.  Not their wives or main girlfriends, their other girlfriends, their wild, fun, and free-spirited girlfriends.

Some girl who worked in an office, store, or restaurant back in Florida, would be very enthusiastic about flying in to one of the very small airports on an out-island, to meet one of the Womanisers on their boat for a week or an extended weekend.  This, to the Womanisers, would be like having a honeymoon in paradise.

Not far after leaving the marina, there were so few people, and nothing but miles and miles of ocean, that there was no need to wear clothing any more.  To young women who had never experienced this before, to be able to walk around and lounge around a yacht all day in the sun, gentle wind, and soft spray from the sea, with absolutely no clothing on, this was very exhilarating and liberating.

In this new, beautiful, exotic, and paradisical environment, the completely naked young women did not put up any resistance to being taken in love whenever the Womaniser wanted.  This honeymoon in paradise, of swimming, diving, catching lobster and conch, eating, drinking, and having sex, might last for a week or and extended weekend.  Then it would be time for her to be dropped off at an island with an airport so that she could fly back to her job in Florida.

Eventually, upon reaching the farthest east and last of the Abacco islands, it would be time for the Womaniser to telephone his wife or main girlfriend and invite her down.  In Marsh Harbor and Hope Town, their wife or main girlfriend would not have to stay on the boat the whole time.

The wife or the main girlfriend, of course she was not interested in swimming, sunning, fishing, diving for conch, eating, getting drunk, or having very much sex.  Her time would be spent talking about selling this boat, interrogations on who had been on this boat, and her enormous irritation and anger with not being able to get a hold of the Womaniser by telephone during this whole time of his trip.

This was back before cell phones, and the Womaniser would say, “Look, I am telling you for the 10th time, there aren’t any telephones out here on these islands, most of these islands are unihabited.”  For Pat, he nearly had his wife convinced of this after a long argument, when in the silence following this argument, the phone hidden on his boat rang.

When Pat was docked at Marsh Harbor, he had his stainless steel Smith & Wesson .44 magnum hidden in the bottom of the garbage, so that it would not be found by a thief or the authorities.  All firearms are prohibited in the Bahamas.  While Pat was in town, his wife threw out the garbage.  When he found that his wife had thrown out the garbage at the marina, and the marina garbage had been taken to the dump, Pat hired a Black kid to go with him to the dump to go through all of the black plastic garbage bags, to try to find his “wallet”.  After a couple of hours of going through black plastic garbage bags, the Black kid said, “I didn’t find your wallet, but I found this gun.”

A few days later, Pat and his wife were joined in Hope Town by John and his wife, and a few other friends.  In Hope Town, the downtown of the island is closed to automobile traffic, and everyone rides bicycles or walks.  There was so little crime, that there was just one police officer, who was unarmed and stayed home mostly.

In Hope Town, vacationing adults got drunker than 15 year olds at a house party, or college freshmen at a fraternity party.  Late at night, walkers and bicyclists would often stumble or crash into the bushes, and just stay there  Or, they would make it as far as a boat dock, and pass out on the dock, unable to get into a dingy to go to their boat in the harbor.

This was a nightmare for the wives and the girlfriends.  The wives and girlfriends would have to push, pull, drag, prod, and plead with their husbands or boyfriends to not pass out here, to keep going.  The wives and girlfriends would be exasperated and at the end of their rope by the time they got their husband or boyfriend to the dock to get into a dingy.  I won’t even describe the chaos and spills that resulted from climbing down the dock ladder to get into a small, easily tipped over dingy.

Pat, John, and their wives had made it to their boat in their dingy.  John, John’s wife, and Pat’s wife had made it from the dingy, and up onto the deck of their boat.  Pat was injured, and too drunk to make it from the dingy up over the rail and onto the boat.  Pat’s wife was becoming more and more upset, frantic, and hysterical, she was yelling, “John, do something! John for God’s sake do something!  John, help him!”

John, being drunk, tired of listening to this shit, and having known Pat his whole life, reached down and grabbed one of Pat’s arms, and then began pulling Pat up the side of the boat like he had hold of the leg of a dead deer.  Pat’s wife was screaming, “John, John, you’re hurting him stop, stop your hurting him!”  John ignored her and kept on.  Pat’s wife was screaming hysterically, “John stop you son of a bitch you’re hurting him, you’re hurting him!”

Eventually, Pat lay face down on the deck, motionless, moaning, and unable to move.  His wife was sobbing and sobbing, and cursing at John.  Pat turned his head and said, “Thank you John.” and then he passed out.  No, most of the wives don’t like to go cruising in the Bahamas.

Introduction To Tales Of Womanising

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When I was growing up in Florida in the 1970s, my father’s friends’ favorite hobby, activity, and sport was Womanising. As I tried to explain in my previous blog post which is a Preface to this blog post, in the late 1940s through the 1970s, and into the 1980s, Womanising was more accepted and tolerated by women. Some women even liked to play this game.

My father’s friends who were players, were business owners, real esate agents, insurance agents, appraisors, attorneys, pilots, salesmen, boat captains, and people with money who didn’t have to work. In order to have enough time to chase women, you had to have a flexible schedule, extra money, and enough independence that no one could interfere with your Womanising.

If there was a new attractive woman that came to work in a bank, real estate office, insurance office, law office, doctor’s office, dentist’s office, business, or store, word would get out. “Hey, you have got to see the new girl that came to work at so-and-so’s office.” Men would make excuses to drop by some real estate office, or insurance office, just to check out the new girl. The business owners liked this, because they would make these men listen to the great deal they had on a house, or start talking to them about life insurance.

Back then, in some ways, women had more sense and were more practical. Instead of being outraged and wanting to sue someone, they evaluated each of the men that came to see them, in order to decide which ones that they would consider going out with.

The women thought many steps ahead. First of all, they might accept an offer to go out on a date, if it was to a nice restaurant where the man would pay for her dinner and her drinks. Did the man have a nice home that she would not mind visiting or living in. Did the man own a nice boat or airplane that would give her the chance to go out and get away for the weekend. Did the man or his family have enough money to be able to support her and her children if they became married.

New women in town, would have to ask co-worker women or other women what kind of person each of the male contestants were. Savvy women knew, that just because a man received a poor reference or recommdation from other women, this did not necessarily mean that he was a bad person. On the contrary, some women give men bad recommendations either out of vindictiveness or wanting to try to keep them for themselves.

Some women liked to play this game out of boredom, loneliness, wanting to go somewhere, wanting to meet other people, entertainment, fun, or wanting to find a mate.

You the reader, might be thinking, how is this any different from what goes on now. For one thing, back in the 1970s, a woman might go on a date with two different men each week, eight different men each month, maybe more than fifty men each year. Right now in North Dakota, it looks to me like attractive young women don’t date five different men before they believe that they must get married. ( Coincidently, the divorce rate now is much, much higher, than it used to be.)

For the men that were Womanisers back in the 1970s, they had to be salesmen with women. They had to have a route or a routine where they would make sales calls on different women throughout the day and throughout the week in order to get dates arranged for Friday night and Saturday night.

Rather than being mad all the time, I think that the women back then found these sales calls to be kind of funny and entertaining, both their own, and watching the men who made sales calls to their co-workers. When the men were not around, this gave the women office workers something to talk about, laugh about, and tease each other about.

Now, if a man stopped by some woman’s place of work and tried to ask her out, she would be talking about harrassment, sexual harrassment, and a restraining order. Her co-workers would all be agreeing with her on this, and they would be looking out the window to get his vehicle description and license plate number.

Back in the 1970s, this was the happiest and most free that I have ever seen people. Contrary to what people believe now, back in the 1970s, this was the most independent, confident, and happy that I have ever seen women. I believe this may have been because women had so much opportunity for dating, meeting people, socialiing, having fun, and going places.

Though the men Womanisers might have thought of women as prey and “sex objects”, many women didn’t care what they thought. If the men were pollite, considerate, entertaining, funny, fun, and good hosts, what difference did it make. Women could chose how they wanted to look at each situation, how they wanted to react, and what they wanted to do. They realised that if you wanted to look at everything and every situation in a bad way, you could make just about everything you wanted, seem bad.

Now, women complain about men in their late twenties and thirties who still live at home with their parents, who spend all of their time playing video games and looking at porn on the internet.

Women on the other hand, spend most of their time now on social media, and using their vibrators, instead of going out on dates.

In the news, all you read about and hear about lately is Sexual Harrassment, Sexual Harrassment, Sexual Harrassment. Due to a mis-guided and mistaken pursuit of Equality, Equal Rights, and Women’s Rights which has gone too far and resulted in “Political Correctness”, people don’t even socialise and date anymore.

Preface To My Blog Post About Tales Of Womanising

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I wanted to write an article on Womanising, from back when Womanising was more accepted and respectable.  In order for people to be able to understand this, I need to explain what the culture and social environment was like at the time.

When I was a kid growing up in Florida in the 1970s, the leaders, the people who were in charge, were World War II veterans and Korean War veterans.  These war veterans had a much different perspective on life, than people today.

Most people alive today, do not know that the United States and its Allies, very nearly did not win World War II.  Germany was so far ahead in war preparations of equipment, supplies, and troops, that they were almost unstoppable and undefeatable.  The only thing that allowed the United States and its Allies to eventually prevail, was Germany’s mistake in trying to invade Russia, at the same time it was occupying Europe.  This caused Germany to have to divide its troops, equipment, and supplies to fight a war on two fronts.

In the U.S., every able-bodied man was drafted into military service to fight in World War II.  The women who were left behind had to assume all of the jobs that were left vacant by the men who went away to fight.  Food, gasoline, rubber, metals, and precious metals were rationed because everything was needed for the war effort.

Men who went to Europe to fight the Germans, or the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, had to fight day after day, for years.  In some battles, U.S. forces were completely over-run and almost every soldier was killed.  The battles were horrible not only because of the casualties caused by bullets, grenades, land-mines, and artillary, but by inadequate supplies and facilities to treat the wounded.  Living conditions were often horrendous, with the inability to evacuate the wounded and the dead during battles that went on and on for days.

Soldiers lived through the sinking of transport ships, battles with the death and destruction of their fellow soldiers, capture, torture, forced-labor, starvation, and the witness of mass atrociities committed at the concentration camps.  They knew that this fight they were in, was fight for the very survival and existence of themselves and everyone back in the United States.

When these soldiers came back, they said, “Never Again”. Which meant, never again would the United States sit back and watch an aggressor nation build up for war and invade neighboring countries.  But “Never Again” also meant, that these soldiers individually were not going to put up with any aggression or injustice.

These soldiers who returned from World War II, they became the presidents, governors, congressmen, mayors, chiefs of police, sherrifs, judges, attorneys, doctors, and dentists. These were the leaders and the people in charge. They had a perspective on life, of what was a big deal, and what was not a big deal. They were unafraid to speak up, speak out, confront, fight, argue, and act.

These leaders and people in charge, set the boundaries for acceptable behavior. Believe it or not, back in the late 1940s through the 1970s, while the World War II veterans and the Korean War veterans were in charge, people in the United States enjoyed the most freedom that they have ever had.

These old men who had survived the war, did not care if people smoked pot, drank alcohol, or partied.  They did not care if people were lesbian or gay.  They did not care if people had a good time, partied, or experimented.  The boundaries were, that you did not harm people, take advantage of people, or steal.

People were much freer to have a good time in the late 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s.  I experienced and lived through the tail end of this.  Believe me, things were much, much different in the 1970s.  People were much happier, they had more fun, had less worries, worked less, had less stress, and everyone was optimistic about the future.

From the late 1940s through the 1970s, and even into the 1980s, one of the favorite activities of men, was Womanising.  Women not only partly accepted and tolerated this, many women actually liked it when things were this way. Many women considered this to be fun, it was a fun game that they liked playing too.

I wanted to write this Preface, so that the reader would understand that Womanising did not arise out of ignorance and darkness, but it was something that came from people having enough wisdom and perspective on life, to know that there is a time for everything, and after the wars, this was a time to enjoy life.

Women Don’t Even Know About Women

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I am tired of reading comments from people defending women. Women don’t even know about women.  I began to recall some of my all-time most messed up stories about women.  This is one of them, which is sure to make everyone angry.

I moved to an area that was heavily Scandinavian and Norwegian, thinking nothing of this.  After my self-employed work was completed in the evening, I would go to a local bar on Main Street.   The people in this bar acted different, though I did not know why that was, at the time.

It wasn’t until I started watching the television series about the Vikings on the History Channel years later, that I knew why this was.  These people in this bar acted just like Vikings.   They dressed like Vikings, talked like Vikings, cut their hair like Vikings, had tattoos like Vikings, and they wanted to fight and stab people all the time like Vikings.

The bar owner was a blond lady who was about 28 years old, I will call her Agatha.  Her best friend was Robin.  Robin was dark haired, about 30 years old, 5′-2″, 105  lbs. Robin had the problem of having three alcohol drinks, and then suddenly being overcome by the alcohol, and not being able to stand or walk.

I would sit in the bar, and just like in the Viking television show, the men would come in with some type of idea, scheme, or plot to fight or stab someone.  It was probably not a good idea for me to be in there, but it was kind of interesting.  Every time that I went there, it was like a new episode of the Vikings television show.  One time, a bearded biker named Todd, said to me, “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

I did like Robin, and the drama was entertaining, that is why I went there.  Robin gave me her telephone number.  Before long, there was this lesbian named Crystal, that was going on and on about me stalking Robin, and what a pervert I was.  After all of the Viking women were all quite mad and staring at me, I said, “I’m not calling Robin, Robin is calling me.”, and I handed my telephone to the bar owner Agatha.  Agatha looked at the record of recent calls, and she saw Robin’s phone number, where Robin had been calling me at 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m.

Agatha, who was like the Viking Queen, announced, “Oh, O.K. I see Robin’s number.  She’s been calling him, I’m going to have to have a talk with her.  Crystal, from now on, Shut Up.”  Agatha, unlike normal white women, did not put up with stupid bullshit from women, which if allowed to continue, goes on forever.

As time went on, and I was talking to Robin, trying to make friends with her, Agatha became tired of Robin’s coyness, playing me along, and not letting me know one way or the other if she was interested, which if allowed to continue, would have gone on forever.

One evening, Robin had had about three or four alcohol drinks, and she could hardly stand or walk.  Agatha said to me, here, take Robin home.  Robin was Agatha’s best friend, and Agatha was tired of Robin not accepting my interest in her, this had gone on long enough, and Agatha was now giving Robin to me.

I carried Robin out to my truck, and put her in the passenger seat.  I said to Robin, “Do you want to go home, or do you want to go to my house?”  Robin said, “To your house.”  As we were driving to my house, I lived out in the country, Robin said, “You’re not going to kill me are you?”  I replied, “No”.

I was thinking, “Here we go with Robin’s stupid bullshit.  She has got to try to ruin this for me.”  Robin continued, “I suppose it would be O.K. if you were going to kill me, that wouldn’t be so bad I guess, but I have two little children.  Promise me you won’t kill me.”  I replied, “OK”.  She continued, “You promise you won’t kill me?”  I said, “I already told you that I wouldn’t kill you.”

Robin was completely ruining this, which I knew, and she knew, she was trying to do.  She was trying not to laugh, and trying not to smile, but she was barely able to because she thought that this was so funny.  When we got to my house, I said, “Do you want to come in, or do you want to go home?”  Robin said, “I want to go home.”  I said O.K., and made the loop through the driveway to get turned around to go back to town.

All the way back to Robin’s house, she was saying, “I’m going to be in so much trouble, I’m going to be in so much trouble.”  This was because, Robin lived with her disapproving older sister, and her elderly mother.  When we got to Robin’s house, I went and knocked on the door, and I said to her sister, I have Robin in my truck, she had too much to drink, I need to carry her inside.  I carried Robin inside, and I put her down on the sofa.  Robin was saying softly, “I’m in so much trouble, I’m in so much trouble.”

The next day, I imagine that later in the day, Robin had wandered down to the bar and said to Agatha, “Why did you do that to me?”  Agatha would have said, “Then don’t get drunk and pass out in my bar bitch.”  Not very much else would have been said, at that time, because Agatha could not have cared less whether Robin had had sex with me or not.

That day and the days following, Robin was always nice to me, and Agatha always looked out for me.  No one was allowed to stab me in the bar.

Unfortunately, rather than end this story now, I will have to explain this to the people who always complain for the sake of women.

There are women like Agatha, Queen of the Viking women, who see right through the bullshit of women, and do not put up with the bullshit of women.  About a year later, Agatha said to me, “You are too nice to women.  Women don’t like that.  You have got to be meaner to women and treat them like shit.”

There are women like Robin, who I can’t even begin to sum up.  She is small and petite, and the great defenders of women who read these blog posts of mine and write comments, probably think that the police need to be called immediately and that there needs to be an investigation on this.

Robin did not want to go home, she wanted to antagonize me some more, which she thought was very funny.  I thought it was funny too, but it was annoying.  If Robin thought that I was going to hurt her, she would have told her best friend Agatha that she didn’t want to go with me, and if Agatha thought that I would hurt Robin, she would not have had her go with me.

All the things that you think you know about women, all the things that women think they know about women, nobody can say what women will do.

My Experiences With Lesbians

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Due to many recent comments about my previous blog post, I need to write this blog post about my experiences with lesbians.

When I was about five years old, my mother opened a Dance Studio.  My mother, and my mother’s mother, were probably more knowledgeable about formal dancing, dance productions, and musical productions than most dance teachers.

Through luck and good fortune, my mother met another lady who had just as much or more experience in dance, dance productions, and musical productions.  This lady, had a daughter who had just graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with a Bachelors of Fine Art in Dance.  Her daughter had a girlfriend, who she graduated from the University of Wisconsin with, who also had a BFA in Dance.

My father, mother, and my mother’s friend, bought a large building together, and had it renovated to make a large professional dance studio.  The two young women lesbians who had just graduated from UW, became the primary teachers.

This was a very lucky and fortunate meeting of people.  My mother was talented and knowledgeable, but no where near as talented, gifted, and knowledgeable as the two young women.  Besides both of these women being as skilled an instructor as anyone will ever have, one of them was already a very accomplished choreographer, and the other was a very gifted and brilliant costume designer.

I am not mentioning either of these two women’s names, because they both went on to become extremely famous.

I had to take ballet, tap, and balllroom dancing.  One of the reasons was, among other reasons, was because I had to be in the large dance and musical productions.  There would be at least one very large production every year.  Some of the roles would be filled by dancers on loan from the most famous dance companies in New York City.  There would sometimes be as many as seventy performers on stage during some scenes.

From when I was about six years old, I was around lesbian, bi-sexual, and gay people.  I had to take dance classes every year, and I had to be in some dance production every year.  Or, I was being volunteered whether I wanted to or not, for some art show or artist collaboration thing.  I was around LGB people all the time.

Not only did I not have a problem with LGB people, I did not have a problem with sexuality, or nudity.  I took it for granted at the time, and normal, that my family and the people that I was around did not have any embarrassment about sexuality or nudity.  During my childhood, I never had any conflict whatsoever about anyone’s sexuality.

Later, when I graduated from college and was back home, I met and became involved with a group of lesbian and bi-sexual women.  I was somewhat accepted into their group, because I was tolerant, not offensive, non threatening, and not at all aggressive towards any of these women.  I was very muscular and in-shape then, and sometimes, some of the women wanted to try something different for a change.

Some lesbians don’t hate men, they just like women better, and they get along with women better.  There is much more to this though, among other things, some women don’t want to be dominated by men, have children, or become a housewife.

There are some lesbians that do hate men, and do attack men.  My father had been a city judge, and later he was the city attorney.  When something really bad happened in the town, the chief of police or a police captain would discuss it with him to get legal advice.

There was a lesbian couple, who were known in the community to be haters of men.  One night, a known naer-do-well petty criminal made the mistake of trying to crawl in through an open window, into the house of this lesbian couple.  They quickly caught him, beat him severely until he was helpless, and then proceeded to torture him and inflict great bodily damage.

Eventually, when this lesbian couple telephoned the police, and the police arrived, the police could not believe how much damage they had done to this man’s entire body.  There was no explaining this away.  The police could not see how this would not end up with both of these women going prison, there was just no reasoning or excuse for how much damage they had done to him.

So, I am tired of the commentors complaining to me that I don’t know anything about lesbians or LGB people.  There are lesbians that prefer women, and then there are lesbians that hate men, want to fight men, and want to hurt men.

Come And Get It! LGBT Event In Dickinson December 17, 2017

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Come And Get It!  Dickinson State University Women’s Basketball Team will be hosting a home game against Presentation College on December 17, 2017 at 3:00 p.m.

As I promised, I will be announcing all the LGBT action at upcoming DSU Athletic Events.  The DSU campus is very pro-LGBT, you could call it a haven, right here in western North Dakota.

Feel welcome to meet and socialize with all the DSU coaches, faculty, staff, athletes, and their families.  And check out the finest and hottest ladies in western North Dakota!  We’ve got short ones, we’ve got tall ones, we got black ones, we got white ones!

I have looked the Bluehawks roster of players, and I have looked at the Saints roster of players, and I can tell you this will be one of the biggest ho-down show-downs of fine ass seen in North Dakota since the Miss America USA pageant in November!

Come for the game, but stay for the party.  The DSU campus is situated right in the middle of beautiful and exotic downtown Dickinson, only blocks away from world-famous Villard Street.  Try out The Paragon, The Rock, The Esquire Club, The Brickhouse Lounge, The Blue 42, and The Liquid Assets.

Drink till you puke! Because the Dickinson Police aren’t working that day!

The Beautiful Photographs Of Madeleine Rose Gower

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In my entire life of looking at photographs, in fashion magazines, glamour magazines, men’s magazines, women’s magazines, Victoria’s Secret Catalogs, books of art, I have never seen anyone photograph as well as Maddie Gower.

I just happened to see her internet Facebook profile after it had been included on my list of people that I might know.  Maddie is a 20 year old college student who lives in Pennsylvania.  She takes one or two photographs of herself each day, and she posts them to her Facebook profile.

I will do my best to describe Maddie’s beauty.  Some of my earliest memories of the most beautiful women that I have ever seen, were photographs of Brigitte Bardot of France during the 1950s and 1960s.  This is probably who Maddie resembles the most in appearance and demeanor.

Like Brigitte Bardot, Maddie is stunningly beautiful, incredibly sexy, unimposing, and inviting.  Her loveliness, beauty, and playfulness make her impossible not to like.

Brigitte Bardot had wanted to be a dancer, and she had taken dance lessons for years before she was accepted to the Conservatoire de Paris.  She and her parents had no intention for her to become a model or an actress, but once other people saw her, they coaxed her into modelling at fashion shows and for fashion magazines, and later into acting.

Because of Maddie’s graceful, dignified, and flattering posture, and beautifully formed legs, I believe that she must have taken dance lessons for many years also.  It appears that Maddie and her parents have never sought for her to become a model or actress, though this is suggested to her hourly by friends, acquaintances, and strangers.

In Maddie’s photographs, there is a slight departure from Bridgitte Bardot’s attitude.  Bridgitte Bardot had more of an attitude of innocence, whereas Maddie has an attitude of soft defiance, sometimes stubborness, and sometimes mischievousness.  This is one of the reasons why Maddie’s photographs are the best that I have ever seen.

I believe without a doubt, that Maddie’s physical appearance, her beauty, flawlessness, and degree of physical perfection, is equal to or superior than any fashion model or glamour model.  I say this because Maddie’s photographs are taken by herself, there are no makeup artists, wardrobe, lighting, or professional photographers taking her pictures.  Yet most of Maddie’s photographs that she spent three minutes on, are better than featured photographs in major magazines that are the result of hundreds of man hours from professional photo shoots.

But beyond her physical beauty, her photographs capture a special uniqueness and rarity, which the term “photogenic” does not even adequately describe in her case.  This is more difficult to describe concisely in words, because words are so dull in comparison to her images.

In Maddie’s photographs, there is the stubbornness and defiance that you see in Sophia Loren’s photographs, the poise and sophistication of Grace Kelly, and sometimes the sexual playfulness and clowning of someone who doesn’t care.

I would like for Maddie to be discovered, become more famous, and have many more opportunities.  She seems ambivalent on the subject of becoming famous, though I believe that she is open to it.

To me, she is like a race horse, and her life like a movie about a race horse.  Mine That Bird was a race horse that had won sometimes, but hadn’t gone very far yet.  It was a surprise that Mine That Bird was even allowed an entry into the 2009 Kentucky Derby, there were only twenty slots.  The odds of winning for this horse were 50 to 1.

This horse was so far back at the beginning of the race, that the announcer almost didn’t see it.  Mine That Bird caught up to to all the other horses, passed them, and then won by 6-3/4 lengths, the longest margin of victory in over 60 years.

This horse liked to run from behind.  Maddie reminds me of this horse.  I think that Maddie likes to run from behind too.  I think that she can win too.

New Era Of Openness And Tolerance At Dickinson State University

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In my previous blog post, I wrote about two Dickinson State University Women’s Basketball players who wanted to fight me at a diner in Dickinson.  I didn’t like it, and I felt like, here we go again, DSU is beginning to again recruit Thug Hoodlum athletes.

You all know that I was wrong, women never do anything wrong, and it is me who has a problem.  Probably, I am not accepting enough of LGBT people.  For those of you who don’t know, LGBT means Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender.

With the hiring of a new DSU Women’s Basketball Coach, Liz Lewis, who is about 30 years old, and her assistant of eight years Janie Rayback, comes a more modern, up to date, and correct world view.  Dickinson State University is taking steps to become a college of the 21st century.

Now, the DSU Athletic Department can openly recruit, provide scholarships, and provide financial assistance to LGBT student athletes, and so it should.  Dickinson State University should be progressive in finding and recruiting LGBT athletes, that way, the DSU campus can more closely reflect the modern world today.

From this point forward, all DSU Athletic Events should be looked on as an opportunity to celebrate and embrace LGBT students, athletes, faculty, staff, and families.  I will begin announcing on my blog website, all DSU Athletic Events, and encouraging all LGBT persons in North Dakota and the neighboring states, to come to DSU to attend the athletic event, socialize, get to know everyone, and become part of the DSU family.

Because North Dakota is a conservative state, with not the many openly LGBT people, DSU Athletic Events should be looked upon as a chance for LGBT people to make friends and find partners.

I imagine that not so far in the future, you might see a proud father of a DSU student, with his family gathered around him at a DSU Athletic Event say, “You know, I always wanted to have anal sex with a guy.”

Thug Hoodlum Athletes At Dickinson State University

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Dickinson State University has begun again, recruiting Thug Hoodlum athletes.  I don’t like that my state income tax money, is being used to provide scholarship money and financial assistance to someone from a foreign country, to come attend school in Dickinson, and when they get here they have an attitude of arrogance, entitlement, and wanting to disrespect and fight me.

When I first came to Dickinson in 2011, the office manager of the company where I worked was complaining to me about the Thug Hoodlum athletes that had been recruited by Dickinson State University.  Several of her neighbors’ houses had been broken into recently, and her husband just caught a DSU student athlete inside their house late one night after they had gone to bed.

I remember one DSU athlete in particular from 2011, everywhere I ever saw him, he was causing problems and getting into trouble.  Even though he might have only gone to DSU for one or two semesters, he stayed in Dickinson for several years.  Many, many people in Dickinson began to notice, that there were people of bad character who had been brought to Dickinson by DSU athletics, they quit going to school, but remained in Dickinson causing problems.

After the scandal of 2012, that resulted from the discovery that foreign students were being awarded degrees from DSU without having completed their course work, DSU changed many of its practices.  After 2013, I no longer saw Thug Hoodlum athletes being recruited to DSU.

In fact, after 2013, the DSU Football team players were some of the nicest, most decent, respectful young men that I have ever met.  Many people in Dickinson noticed this, and discussed this.  Employers were happy to have these DSU football players as part-time or seasonal employees because they were good kids.

On this past Friday night at 9:00 p.m., I went to a diner in Dickinson after having worked all week far outside of Dickinson where there wasn’t any internet service.  I was using my computer to check my e-mail and read my Facebook while I was eating.  When anyone came in, I looked up to see if it was someone that I knew, I have been going to this diner for the past five years.

Two DSU Women’s Basketball players walked in wearing their DSU team warm-ups.  When they sat down at the table behind me, I looked up to see who they were, and I said “hello” to them, and I went back to what I was doing.  Both of these young ladies sneered and glared at me, acted like they had a chip on their shoulder, and a very bad attitude.

When someone else came in the diner, I looked up to see if it was someone that I knew, to acknowledge them or say hello to them.  Every time that I looked up or looked around, these two DSU Women’s Basketball players became angrier and angrier toward me, acting like they were wanting and ready to fight me.

If you have ever been around people who came from the street, people who are involved in street gangs, people who have been in jail and prison, who try to be threatening, intimidating, challenging, and confrontational with people, like they are ready and wanting to fight, this is exactly how these two young women acted.

I felt, here we go again, DSU is recruiting Thug Hoodlum people for their athletic programs again.  I looked up the DSU Women’s Basketball roster, and I saw that the player who was acting the most aggressive and wanting to fight me, was from a foreign country.  This is her first semester at DSU, before that she went to Miles City Community College in Montana.

Reading the DSU Women’s Basketball team roster further, I saw that the women’s basketball coach, Liz Lewis, came from Miles City Community College where she coached women’s basketball last year.  I saw that she brought three women’s basketball players with her from Miles City Community College.

I can’t believe that tax payer dollars in North Dakota, are being used to provide athletic scholarships and financial assistance to people from a foreign country to attend school in Dickinson, and when they get here they act arrogant, entitled, and act nasty toward the tax payers that are paying for them.  I doubt that DSU Alumni and financial donors would like that DSU is once again recruiting athletes that are people of bad character and with bad behavior.

I wonder if the DSU faculty, campus police, students, and other women basketball players have had run-ins or problems with these two women.  If DSU continues to recruit athletes that behave like this, this will be more reason for parents not to send their kids to DSU, and for the North Dakota State Legislature to become persuaded that Dickinson State University is not a campus that should be supported or continued.

I am going to find the North Dakota State Legislators that have been advocating for closure of DSU, and bring to their attention what the Women’s Basketball program is doing.

I later found out, that on this particular Friday night, the DSU Women’s Basketball Team had just had a 77-47 loss in Dickinson.  This is no reason for two players angry with their loss, to go take out their anger on a 48 year old grey bearded man who is sitting and eating by himself in a diner.

Update 9/8/2018:

I looked up the Dickinson State University Women’s Basketball program for the 2018-2019 season.  This will be coach Liz Lewis’ second year as head coach.  Just about everything from last year’s season 2017-2018, is gone from the internet, the team roster, the game results, the photographs, everything.  Now, going forward, the women’s basketball program appears to be more positively oriented, and more image conscious.  It appears that everything that I was angry about, has been addressed.

Stopping Theft And Crime In Dickinson, North Dakota

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Today when I arrived home at my low rent apartment, I found that someone had parked in my parking space.  I was angry about it, because I had to trim tree branches and clear out some debris in order to make this parking space at the far back corner of the parking lot that abuts neighbors’ backyards.

I didn’t know if somebody was fucking with me, because this has been my spot for months, this spot is away from all of the other parking spaces, everyone has picked their own spot, and there hasn’t been a parking dispute here for at least four months.  I wanted to find out who did this, was this a new tenant, was this a visitor, was this unintentional, or was this intentional.

I was angry enough to yank this car out of this space with my truck, but I quickly realized that this would lead to retaliation against my truck.  I knocked on a neighbor’s door who I thought might have parked this car there, but luckily they were not home.

I was going to leave a note on this car’s windshield saying that I had to clear out this space by trimming tree branches and moving debris, I had been parking here, and asking if they were a new resident, to call me.  The way that this car was parked, it looked like it might not even be running.  It was a very beat up car.  It was parked back up against the side of the garage.  The driver’s door was so close to the side of the garage, that I didn’t see how the driver could have even got out of the car if they had backed it in, they might have pushed it back.

I walked over to the car, to look at it, and I was very surprised and startled when someone got out of it.  They were startled too, because apparently they were trying to hide.  The person who got out of this car, he immediately started saying some lame, nonsense excuse about what he was doing.  I asked him right away, if he had just moved in to these apartments, or if he was visiting someone.  I could tell from his erratic nervous behavior that it was neither.  He said that he lived in this area.  Nothing that he was saying explained what he was doing here on this property, at the far back corner of the parking lot, backed in beside the end of the garage, like he was hiding.

This person said to me, hey, if you want your space that bad, I will leave.  I got his vehicle license plate number and I walked away.  To me, this is what it looks like when someone is getting ready to, or is in the process of going through other people’s vehicles in a parking lot in order to steal things.

I telephoned the Dickinson Police non-emergency number to explain what was going on, but the dispatcher at first was dismissing what I was saying, thinking that I was calling about someone taking my parking space.  I tried to explain, “No, there is so much theft going on in Dickinson right now, and in the area that I live in, I think that this person is here to steal things, they don’t live here, they aren’t visiting anyone here, their story does not make any sense, and they don’t belong here.”

I gave the Dickinson Police dispatcher the vehicle license plate number, and I asked if they could send an officer over so that I could tell them what was going on.  While I was waiting for the Police, I talked to some of my neighbors about what was going on, and they knew a little about this vehicle and the vehicle owner.  He and his vehicle had been spotted at a suspected drug house in the area.  We speculated that what he was doing here, involved either stealing or drugs.

When the Police Officer arrived within about ten minutes of me calling the non-emergency number, the Police Officer said that he knew, and the Police knew, who this person was, and that this was someone that the Police needed to be called about if he showed up at the apartment property again.

I gave the Police Officer the license plate number and a complete description of the vehicle, and some additional information about the vehicle that I got from the neighbors.  I let the Police officer know that some of my neighbors had had items stolen from their vehicles in the recent past.

I know and my neighbors know, that if we find items missing from our vehicles later today or tomorrow, who it was that probably got into our vehicles.  The Police now know, that this guy was caught recently in this neighborhood, parked behind a garage on private property, where he had no reason to be.

The reason that I am acting like this, is because me and my neighbors have had things stolen out of our vehicles recently, and there has been illegal drug activity at the apartments where we live in the recent past.  If we don’t do something about the people who show up here and don’t belong here, the crime will just keep happening here.

Well Run Arby’s Restaurant In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I have lived in Dickinson, North Dakota for a little over five years now.  I started this blog website approximately three years ago, mostly out of frustration with living in Dickinson.  Living in Dickinson, there was very little to do, no where to go, the people were unfriendly, and the restaurants were all bad, especially the waitresses.

Of the nearly five hundred blog posts that I have written, most of them are complaining about Dickinson.  About one year ago, I began to realize that one of the only places in Dickinson that I didn’t have any complaints about, was the Arby’s restaurant.

I began to realize that I never ever had a long wait in the drive through, or at the counter in Arby’s.  No one ever got my order wrong in any way whatsoever.  No employee ever irritated me, annoyed me, or did anything wrong.  The food that I ordered was always good or O.K.  I was never mischarged or given the wrong change.  I never saw the employees loose their cool, bicker, squabble, or argue.

I began to think that nothing ever went wrong at this Arby’s because of the employees who worked there.  How could this be, that each of these employees showed up to work, did their job, were pleasant, and got along with each other?  No place else in Dickinson has employees like this, how did this happen?

There are a couple of nation-wide franchise restaurants in Dickinson that have nearly closed several times because they were unable to get employees, assistant managers, and managers that would show up to work and work competently.  All businesses in Dickinson had a difficult time hiring and keeping competent employees during the Oil Boom that occurred from 2007 through 2014.  How was this Arby’s restaurant able to hire and retain good employees?

The manager of the Arby’s restaurant in Dickinson, I believe that her name is Sarah.  I think that the owners of this restaurant know that Sarah has done a very good job.  I don’t know if the owners of this restaurant are aware of the turnover and employee chaos that all of the other restaurants in Dickinson have.

I don’t know exactly how Sarah does it.  I think that she must have some unique ability to pick out and identify the good applicants from the bad ones.  I don’t know how she can tell which applicants are going to show up every day, do their job, take their job seriously, be pleasant, and get along with everyone.  All business owners and managers wish that they could pick the applicants that would be good long term employees, but hardly anyone can.

I noticed that the employees at this Arby’s restaurant are there to do their job.  They always seem to be 100% focused on their job, and I don’t see many businesses where the employees are like this all the time.  Especially in the restaurant business, I usually see employees who are thinking about and talking about everything but work, and acting like and saying out loud that they would rather be some place else.

Besides hiring good people, I would say that this Arby’s must have a good positive work environment.  A work place that is fair, competent, organized, well managed, and pleasant.  If it weren’t, they would have employee turnover, people not showing up for work, stressed out employees, and employees who were openly unhappy at work.  But they don’t have any of this.

I hope that I don’t mess this restaurant up by writing a complimentary blog post about it.

 

Backstory On Why I Like “The Pit” Gym In Dickinson, North Dakota

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In my previous blog post I wrote about the new gym, “The Pit” gym, that recently opened in Dickinson, North Dakota.  This gym is a “Weight Room”, which is very rare now.  During the past 25 years, most gyms have been transformed into “Fitness Centers”.  “Fitness Centers” are part of the weakening and feminization of the U.S., and have made me and many males weaker and emasculated.

Let me go back 40 years ago, to start at the beginning.  I was a small, skinny, and uncoordinated kid.  My lack of coordination had a lot to do with my bad eyesight.  But I was strong.  I rode very, very far on my bicycle most days, much further than other kids.  I also paddled and rowed boats for hours and hours, longer than adults would have.  I was very strong in my legs and in my shoulders, from routinely peddling, paddling, or rowing way past the point of what was physically easy, and into what was physically difficult and even painful.  I had to if I wanted to get home.

In junior high school, this was back before they had middle schools, all of the six elementary schools from the region had their students go on to merge into one single junior high school.  All the kids had to start over again, not knowing anything about the other kids that they were now in classes with.  I was a small, skinny, uncoordinated kid who whore glasses, everyone expected me to be weak.

But I wasn’t weak.  In P.E. class, I was one of the best runners, long jumpers, and wrestlers.  In wrestling, the P.E. coach generally tried to not have small kids wrestle the big kids, so that the small kids didn’t get hurt.  I would challenge the biggest kids, which they hated, because even if they did win, they had to fight as hard as they could and they would just barely beat me, and the whole thing would be humiliating because they were so much bigger than me.

The strength that I had, was from riding bicycles all day, or rowing all day, starting from when I was six or seven years old, and going well past the point of what was physically easy, to the point of it being very difficult and even painful.  My father had wanted me to exercise more doing push ups and lifting weights, but I didn’t want to at that time.  I would mess around with my father’s rusty old weights some, but not very often.  It wasn’t until I was approximately 14 or 15 years old that I began to use my father’s weight set more often.

When I was approximately 15 or 16 years old and in high school, my father bought a weight bench for doing bench presses at a garage sale, and brought it home for me to use.  I was still small for my age, and I think that I was having a little difficulty with kids that were older or bigger than me in high school.  I would not put up with bullying, and I would not back down, but I was having difficulty.  In 9th grade, I might have been 5′-4″ or 5′-5″, and weighed maybe 130 lbs.  I recognized, and my father recognized that I needed to get bigger, heavier, and stronger if I was going to survive very well.  I was just too small.

Sixteen or seventeen was when I started to lift weights almost every day, using my father’s weight set in our garage.  I did many repetitions and many sets of flat bench press and bicep curls.  I did some overhead press.  My muscle size and my muscle strength increased, and my weight increased.  My coordination increased and my confidence increased.  Thank God.

I shudder to think what kind of person I would be now, if I had not begun lifting weights in high school, made gains in my size and strength, and understood how to make gains in my size and strength.  It was regrettable that I had not begun a simple routine of weight lifting in elementary school, and been that much further along in high school.  When I graduated from high school, I was approximately 5′-8″ and weighed 155 lb.  Still pretty small.

In my first semester of college, away from home, I quit lifting weights altogether, in order to focus completely on my classes, and I became pretty scrawny.  In second semester, I went to the college gym with some guys from my dormitory hall one day, and I continued to go almost every day from that point on.  Again, Thank God, because I almost completely gave up doing any weight lifting, and I was becoming very scrawny and weak.  I hate to think about what kind of scrawny and weak person I would have become, if I would not have continued to use weights.

That small college gym was my first experience in a “real gym”, where they had real weight benches and real bars, not shoulder width bar rests and 3/4″ diameter bars.  At this point, I will quit calling what I knew as “weight lifting”, and call it “weight training”, because I began to learn that there was more to it than doing bench press and bicep curls every day.

I became acquainted with people who were more knowledgeable than me about “weight training”.  I began to learn more exercises, how they developed different muscles, and variation of exercises throughout the week.  When I returned home to Florida for the summer break, I began going to a very large and competitive gym.

In the coastal town of Florida where my home was, people were very concerned, conscious, and competitive about how they looked.  One reason was, that everyone went to the beach and they didn’t want to look bad.  Another reason was, everyone went out at night in Daytona trying to pick up women, whether they were local girls or out of town girls, and you did much better with women if you were tan and muscular.

At the first gym that I went to in Florida, some of the young guys were on football or wrestling scholarships at various schools around the country, some people were seriously competing in body building or power lifting, one guy was a male stripper.  Everyone was very competitive about how much weight they could do, in every exercise, and in every lift.

One of my nemesis from high school, who was a little smaller than me, he could bench press 225 lb a couple of times, without a spotter, which I thought was a lot.  One of the steroid user football players from high school who was a year older than me could bench press two 120 lb dumbbells twice, which I thought was a lot.  Another guy from my high school that was a year older than me, he could squat 385 lb, which I thought was a lot.  In the gym, nobody acted like an asshole, but everyone was competing against each other.

That summer, I worked from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at a resort in a swamp on the ocean doing grounds keeping.  Every day after work, I would go home, take a shower, and then go to the gym.  I was young, tan, in shape, and very muscular.  Women, were nice to me, especially older women, even though I had bad acne.  My sophomore and junior year at the small college that I went to up north, when I returned after summer break, being so tan, in-shape, and muscular, the women were very interested in me and I stood out.

It was the competitiveness of the gyms that I went to that helped me.  I had a much, much better life, being in shape, being muscular, being more confident, and having more interest and attention from women.  Seeing men that were bigger and stronger than me, being able to do more weight than me, made me try to do better.  Seeing people squat 600 lbs, made me realize that I needed to do more, that I had a long way to go.

After three years of college, I transferred to the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida to enter their school of engineering.  The University of Florida was the hardest school in Florida to get into, and at that time it had 35,000 students.  These were the most aggressive, ambitious, competitive assholes that I had ever been around in my life.  The University of Florida football team won two national championships when I was there, and the young people in that town were very energetic and hyped up.

The Gainesville Gym had UF football players, ex football players, people who wanted to be “walk ons”, competitive power lifters, competitive body builders, bouncers, thugs, male strippers, female strippers, and steroid users.  The Gainesville Gym sponsored the Mr. Gainesville body building competition.  In the gym, none of these people were assholes, though it was very competitive in the gym.

By the time that I finally graduated from the University of Florida, this was just about the peak of my strength.  I was 25 years old, 5′-9″ and 195 lbs.  Though I could only bench press about 315 lbs, I could fairly easily bench press two 140 lb dumbbells for four repetitions, which in 30 years of going to gyms, I have only ever seen one other person do.  I could over head press 245 lbs while seated, which in 30 years I have seen one person do 270 lb.  I could do bicep curl repetitions with 135 lb, from a stand still without cheating, which in 30 years I have never seen anyone do repetitions with 135 lb from a stand still without cheating.

From going to “Weight Room” gyms, where everyone was competitive about how much they could lift, and seeing what other people could do, I became determined to do better and to do more myself.  Instead of being a small, weak person, who was susceptible to bullying, and easily victimized, I ended up being much much stronger than an average person.

As an aside, from going to “Weight Room” gyms for many years, I learned how to more correctly asses the strength of other males from their physical characteristics, and base how I would handle situations on this.  Likewise, other males who had gone to “Weight Room” gyms for many years, also based their actions on their understanding of physical characteristics.  In life, this often resulted in an unspoken and mutual understanding in potential conflicts, among all parties, that no one wanted there to be a fight.

Though I had meant for the above paragraph to just be a side note, it actually ties in to what I wanted to say about “Fitness Centers”.  When I was going to “Weight Room” gyms, some of the people at these gyms were violent criminals, had been violent criminals, were thugs, or bullies.  I can not recall at any “Weight Room”, where any adult male wanted to start a fight with me.  This was not out of kindness, this was out of a desire for self preservation.

In contrast, at the West River Community Center in Dickinson, which is a “Fitness Center”, I can hardly think of a time that some woman, some kid, or some man did not nearly start a fight with me.  Whether I was sitting on a toilet, and some kid kept banging on the stall door after I already told him how to get to the other toilet, or some kid was kicking a soccer ball from the basketball court toward the joggers on the upper level track, or some woman who wore short shorts and was hanging upside down showing her panties was acting mad at me because she thinks I was looking, or some guy ran into me, I couldn’t go to the WRCC without becoming so irritated that I just didn’t even want to be there.

The long walk from a distant parking space in the WRCC parking lot, the kids getting underfoot as you enter the building, the moms with a bunch of kids taking up the entire entry way and counter so that you can’t pass or scan in, juveniles running through the corridors and the weight area, women taking up the benches and weight racks to lift 10 lbs or 20 lbs, young women and young men in their groups of twos or threes that are really just there because they have no other place to socialize as a minor.

As a male, what is motivational, inspirational, or impressive to you?  A) A plump high school girl sitting on a leg machine, not using it, and sending text messages on her phone;  B) Three high school boys milling around pushing and shoving each other because they have no place else to go;  C)  A woman on an elliptical machine;  D)  Some guy who can bench press twice his body weight.

If you want to be emasculated, you might as well just cut your testicles off and save yourself the trip of going to West River Community Center.