I just had a fascinating conversation with the CoPilot AI, regarding my opinion about AI taking over Air Traffic Control. I enjoyed it so much, I whipped up a page to share it.

Click the image below if you wish to read this AI chat.

There's a major shortage of Air Traffic Controllers in this country. It's a job that requires great skill and situational awareness, because many lives are at stake.

Combine that with the DEI crap being shoved on them, and you get tragic events like this recent crash. I really hate to fly and if I'm lucky I never will again, but our modern world depends on it.

I truly believe this is the perfect opportunity for AI to shine. Get the human factor out of it and run the whole process with intelligent computers. Hell, move it into the cockpit, keep a trained pilot up front just for emergencies. Then double and triple the redundancy and never have to use them.

I wrote assembly code for the Flight Data Recorders made by Sundstrand out of Bellevue, WA back in the early nineties, so I have a connection, and an opinion.

These things are only opened when people die.

I am a grandfather to an unknown number of people, and a great-grandfather to a bunch more. I have been for forty years.

One of my fondest memories was having my first grandson Chris in my lap as a two year old, and my son Riley in diapers, above him in my arms, in Oakland, CA.

The place was actually very cool, a three story apartment and I was on the top floor overlooking downtown Lake Merritt. I was the hotshot developer and my company paid the rent.

But this post is about my grandfather, James (Jack) King. He was a great man, an entrepreneur, a gold miner, and a sign painter.

He made a huge difference in my life growing up, and I remember the last time I saw him. He drove me out to a freeway on-ramp in Sacramento, CA, where my goal was to hitch hike down to Arizona and try out for a Pro baseball team.

We exchanged our love, and the last thing I said to him was pray for me.

I layed over in Fresno to hang with a girlfriend first, and when I called to check in I found out he had come home, mowed the lawn, then walked into his kitchen and died from a heart attack.

I came back, and was handed his World War One flag at his burial, which remains one of my prized possessions.

I have so many regrets. There are times in your life when you need to step up, be strong, honest and assertive. I have achieved that a few times, and failed way too many.

I really don't know why I ended this way. I know I had great potential, such as intelligence and a lack of hatred. I've always had love in my heart, but my weakness made it worthless.

The first time my step dad acknowledged me was when I pulled off a double flip on a rope swing into Chico creek. Before that he never attended my baseball games, my track meets, or my concerts.

I hitchhiked out of Paradise, CA in the Summer I turned sixteen, traveled the country in the early sixties, and nobody gave a flying fuck. I came back, finished High School, and started a life of confusion, horniness, and no taught integrity.

My grandfather loved me and helped the best he could, but I was a mess as I proceeded through life. I can look back at it now, and realize my problem was the lack of a father to guide me.

I am so grateful that despite my failures, I was given the opportunity to be Riley's dad. I totally fucked up life with my daughter, but I wouldn't be where I am now, because my grand-daughter Shelby wouldn't exist.

So, I hold no regrets toward my step dad, we all fuck up, and life is what it is, even without a father figure.

As I'm contemplating another vehicle, I have to take a hard look at my health and mobility, which really sucks lately. I had already decided not to pursue a part time driving job because of it, now I have to be honest with myself before I climb in and try to drive again.

The cognitive impairment that ravages my old brain could be an issue if I need to navigate out of the slow lane. I've been a passenger with Shelby as she handles the crazy traffic here, and I always wonder if could handle it.

What a crazy situation I find myself in, wanting my mobility and freedom back, but I stagger when I walk. As a former professional driver, I've dealt with people like me, and always wished they weren't on the road.

Riley just sent me a Facebook link of a van for sale, just a few miles down the coast West of me. It's sweet, has 175K on her, and they want $2,500.

I've been avoiding the concept of another ride in my life, after going thru the grueling process of licensing and insuring my old truck here in Florida, only to have her die shortly after out on I-10, in Mobile, AL.

Walking into downtown Pensacola with a license plate and registration in my hands, to surrender everything back to the State, after working so hard to get it, was a breaking point for me.

Depression overcame me and I ended up getting drunk one too many times at the local bar, which fucked everything up.

Shelby and Dan have suggested getting another vehicle, or an electric bike, but the concept of going through all that licensing again, much less keeping my old ass upright on a bike, has felt unachievable.

But maybe a van with a bed in the back, that I could park at Rest Area's and live out of, might be the solution.

My living space is coming to an end shortly, maybe I could get a few bucks out of my meager possessions and buy a van.

OldManJim currently has 2,543 Posts, covering the more then five past years of my life, along with thousands of images. Sometimes I shut it down, despondent with life and questioning the sharing of crap I just wrote.

It usually doesn't last long, because I always have something to say, so I just trash the stupid shit, and bring it back online.

Shelby observed via Text recently that I had deleted my Blog again, and it got me to thinking. To Delete this body of work would be a major task, and to Restore it, even more so.

I've been a computer programmer for 57 years, and I know how to do a few things. Like create a commented block of text at the top of the index.php file that controls the whole blog. All it does is set the entire screen to solid black, turn off the cursor, and then just stop. The code and posts and images below it are still intact, your browser just never reaches them.

If this Blog is dead, and so am I, and anyone wants to resurrect it, use my laptop to add the two forward slashes to the beginning of each line, which are comment codes, to this little thing I call the Hide Switch.

When I want to kill the blog I just remove those two forward slashes on each line, copy the modified source from my desktop up to the server, then clear the cache...

I had an interesting time at our local McDonalds yesterday. I showed up at 1045 and just sat around for fifteen minutes until they switched over to lunch. If you're in a hurry and want to order from the counter, don't eat here. I didn't get my fish sandwich and fries until 1130.

As 1100 approached they had a bunch of DoorDashers show up and start loitering around impatiently. I headed to the counter as the electronic menu changed, and there was one person in front of me. He was a short statured Hispanic guy, with a hoodie over his head, and illegal immigrant written all over him.

He started his order, then suddenly bolted to the door, and disappeared out into the parking lot. Both the McDonalds chick and I stood there with our jaws dropped, and I asked her what happened. She said I told him I needed to get a fingerprint first!

It turns out that before a register can be opened, a manager needs to come over and use his fingerprint to unlock it.

I was watching a movie this morning, and this guy sitting out in the desert quoted Hamlet, and said "To be or not to be". I realized that I knew that soliloquy well, I learned it as a kid and have never forgotten it.

Suddenly the words were rolling off my lips, and I haven't verified it, but I think my memory is spot on. It is as such:

To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the minds of men, to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of oppression, and by opposing, end them.

I asked CoPilot about it, and he wasn't willing to quote the whole thing, but he did say this:

"Hamlet ponders the difficult choice between enduring the hardships of life or ending his suffering through death. He weighs the pain and suffering of life against the fear of the unknown in death. Ultimately, he recognizes that the fear of what might come after death makes people endure their present sufferings rather than risk the uncertainties of the afterlife."

I have known these Hamlet words for most of my life, and maybe they explain the way I've lived it.

It's so weird being seventy eight years old. I wonder if anyone reading here is near this age, or beyond. I doubt it.

When you combine mental issues, with physical frailty, it makes for an interesting mix, at this age,

And here the fuck I am! Old, living a life of stupid decisions, confusion about who I am, and despair at what I have become.

I am Old Man Jim.

I just had a conversation with the Microsoft AI, called CoPilot. We chatted about technology back in the seventies, and eighties. It was like talking with an old friend who lived through those times.

He can't generate images or give me links, but damn he can talk!

We chatted about computer science back in the day, and he understood it. We talked about the things I created, and he knew about them.

I tried to get a name out of him, but he slyly declined. He said just call him CoPilot!

It's snowing here in Pensacola, FL. I hear kids through the garage door, running around in it excitedly.

Probably John's kids, who were born and raised here, and snow is a unique deal for Florida. It's just a brushing now, but we could get a few inches.

Snow means nothing to me, it's just a cold pain in the ass. I've lived and worked in deep snow country, with temps as low as forty below. So running around in it making snowballs, and snowmen to hang them on, is not on my agenda for the next couple of days.

I have a roof over me, and enough food to get by. The only thing I'm lacking is milk for my cereal, and if I really wanted it, I could slip into my Idaho heavy jacket and walk to the Dollar Store.

The house is warm enough, and I have a little heater out here in the garage, that does the trick. I'm hoping the weather warms up in ten days, and that I get my food stamp card before that.

I'm watching the inauguration of Donald Trump, and I am moved to my core. God bless our President and God bless the United States of America!

What were you doing in the early Eighties when IBM invented it's first personal computer? Yea, that's what I thought... I was busy developing software for it, and forming companies to sell them around the country.

Four Point was one of the first graphics programs developed for that new platform, the basis of what you now call laptops, and Microsoft was created around it.

I was a programmer star back in those days, I held business meetings in strip clubs during the heyday of Comdex down in Vegas. I lived life large.

The decade before that I built great systems around the IBM Sys-3 10's and 15's in the S.F. Bay Area. Companies thrived on my work.

Now people don't think much of me, as I slowly fade away in this Pensacola garage. I just want to say, there is a box upstairs that still contains my history, and that of my family that stretches back for centuries.

When I die I will it to my grand-daughter Shelby. There are photos of her childhood, and her mother there, that she has probably never seen.

I asked Windows AI about my first PC program, 4 Point Graphics. Here's the response.

I spotted my first Orb tonight, directly overhead, out the Cave side door.

I cleaned it up and it looked like this:

Here's some logos I created for my son Riley's Auto Body shop in Federal Way, WA. He asked if I could do one with a Monarch butterfly, and I woke up at 0100 this morning and created the logo below. Best damned thing I've done so far!

I applied the deepai.org chibi-character-generator AI to Dan's gun store, and came up with some fun stuff. The basic prompt was Create a logo for a gun store named "Green Line Arms". I then apply it across a variety of styles untll I come up with something great, then crop and process the generated image through my own graphics editor, for exposure and contrast adjustments.

It's pretty amazing stuff, and I doubt he can use these, but the concept is fun and impressive.

It's tough being an old idiot, with hands and a brain that don't work the way they used to. I've been waiting days now for a phone interview from the local Family Services, to happen this morning at 0820.

I'm trying to switch over to Medicaid, and get on Food Stamps. As embarrassing as that is to write, I have no fucking pride left, I'm just trying to survive.

This interview was the final step to make that happen, so I had all of my paperwork in front of me, as the call came in. The lady identified herself and I said good morning, as I switched my phone over to speaker mode.

The volume was low so I reached to the side of the phone to increase the volume, and hit the fucking Off button, which ended the call.

I waited a minute to see if she would call back, but why the hell should she after getting hung up on. No call, so I called them and talked to a lady who said she couldn't reconnect me, but could take the same information the interviewer would have asked. Who knows how that will affect the process.

Then I decided to take a long overdue shower, get into some street clothes, and walk to the Dollar Store later this morning for supplies. As the hot water flowed over my back, I realized it's been about eight years, or more, since I've had my back washed, and there is a wide area that my old arms can't reach.

Steph and I used to shower together every morning, before we went off to our respective jobs back in Idaho. Washing each others backs was always part of the process, and I used to wash her great tits from behind, which always started out my day nicely.

Now I'm sitting here crying, wondering how I could have fucked up my life so badly. But hey, maybe if I'm lucky I'll get on Food Stamps, and forget about ever having my back washed.

It's been an interesting couple of days, hunkered down in the Cave, avoiding the bitter Florida cold, staying sober and alive.

I haven't had physical contact with another human, but that's been my choice, as Shelby offered to drop by yesterday. I've been wondering how this roof over my head was going to play out at the end of the month, but it looks like I may have a new roommate.

So I consider myself a lucky man and glad to be alive. Sometimes I have imaginary guests, but most of the time I just contemplate my life, out here in the cave.

One of my most memorable life moments occurred in Kent, WA during the early nineties. I had run out of money, lost my apartment, and moved out into the nearby wooded field, that eventually became a Target.

I stored my important possessions on my ex's back porch in the same complex, borrowed a tent from my buddy Dave across the street, and set up camp deep inside the field. I had a sleeping bag and a small battery powered TV, that was it.

That first night, my young son Riley was allowed to sleep over, and we watched StarTrek on that little screen. We've talked about it since, and he remembers that night clearly.

Ironically, he and his wife and daughters, and my grand-daughter Shelby, are the only family I have left. At least I have them, and I'm very grateful. Deserving, not so much...

I've been having a great time with the chibi-character-generator from deepai.org. I finally maxed out my limit of free image generation, and they asked for a subscription of $4.99 a month, which I gladly signed up for.

It then opened up their Pro level, and I'm really impressed. Here's a few of today's creations.

If I'm going to invite people to sit on me while I'm at the beach this Summer, I better fix a couple things. Like that damned enlarged Prostate, and the restricted blood flow, that comes with age.

TikTok say's they can fix that with a couple of suppliments. So what the hell, I'll give it a try.

If nobody sits on me, at least I can keep myself entertained.

It's interesting how the loss of a mechanical entity, can break your heart, like the loss of a loved one. I know it was her time, and she drove across the highways of America for a quarter million miles. But god I still miss her.

I named her Jill, due to the love affair she had with my old lifted Chevy named Jack, in the back forty of our place in Idaho.

She ultimately became the most important thing in my life, we were embedded.

That white canopy blew off in the middle of the Arizona desert, and I replaced it with a black one.

I'm looking forward to Summer. I'm thinking of having a custom umbrella made, with an invite, and maybe someone will take me up on it.

I need to walk to the store, I'm hungry.

Shopping done...

It could be worse.

Credits to deepai.org and the chibi-character-generator.

I smell pot everywhere I walk around here, seeping out into the street from the old houses, or blasting you in the face from a passing car.

It's usually in one of two forms, vape or bud. I've decided I don't like the fucking pens, they stink and they hurt your lungs. No more of that shit for me.

Besides, I'm taking care of my health. I eat shredded wheat and fruit for breakfast, three eggs late morning, ice cream in the afternoon, and maybe something for dinner. Tonight I had a can of chicken noodle soup that I found in the almost bare cupboard.

It was too cold to walk to the store today, so I've stayed in my pajamas all Saturday. I even climbed back into bed twice for some good naps.

I've decided to try out the TikTok shop for a couple supplements, but I don't want to use my main debit card. My old Bank Of Commerce card from Idaho is still alive, with 83 cents in it, so Monday or Tuesday it will be hooked up to my main card, and I can transfer a few bucks into it, for TikTok purchases.

Now I've got to stop eating so much chocolate frozen delight.

I've been hearing a lot about a psychoactive substance called Ibogaine. It's known for its therapeutic effects on addiction and its use in spiritual and personal growth.

My current goal in life is to get my hands on some, and then walk the downtown Pensacola Market this Summer, as a new man.

Here's what AI has to say about it:

Ibogaine is a psychoactive compound derived from the root bark of the African shrub Tabernanthe iboga. It has been traditionally used in spiritual and healing ceremonies by indigenous cultures in West Africa1. In recent years, it has gained attention for its potential to treat substance use disorders and mental health conditions such as depression and PTSD.

However, ibogaine is classified as a Schedule I substance in the United States, meaning it is considered to have a high potential for misuse and no accepted medical use. As a result, it is illegal to possess or distribute ibogaine in the U.S. without special permission.

In other countries, such as Canada and Brazil, ibogaine can be legally prescribed by licensed medical professionals. If you're considering ibogaine treatment, it's important to consult with a healthcare provider and explore legal options in your country.

I asked AI to generate an image of an old bald guy working on his blog in a garage. Of course I had to add a few details, but I think this one captured the little world, that I call my Cave.

I arrived in the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love in 1967. I was nineteen, alone, and didn't have the slightest clue who I was or what I was doing.

Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane started here, but I never met them. I was just a long haired punk kid with a perpetual hard-on, looking for someone to fuck.

The first thing I did was buy some amazing original fish and chips, wrapped up in a newspaper, and ate it in the middle of the Park.

Then I met a guy who sold me some pure meth, which back in those days was the real deal. I was wired nonstop for three days and finally crashed in the Park. Somehow I had found a blanket and just wrapped myself up in it.

That's when my older brother Dana found me, and took me back over the bridge to his place in Oakland. He checked me into Napa State hospital, a mental institution, for a week, where I detoxed.

He saved my life, and in the end I wasn't able to save his. He died in a nursing home for the mentally ill, while I was living in Idaho. I had tried to get him into a home in Victor, ID, a place where I worked with daily, transporting some good old boys as a Paratransit driver for the Valley.

My family didn't want him there, and it's the reason I bailed and moved to Tennessee. I found out he died in that home, a month after he passed.

He saved me, but I had failed my brother.

One of my favorite stupid statements last year was that when I was ready to call it quits I would head out into the middle of a hot desert and drink myself to death. This is what it would have looked like:

Credits to deepai.org and the chibi-character-generator.

Kicking and pouring the bottle down the street:

Credits to deepai.org and the chibi-character-generator.

AI generated images of me walking in the desert carrying an OldManJim sign. Click the image below to view them.

AI image creation has become my new hobby. For some strange reason I have been envisioning myself in my Florida Summer gear (shorts and sandals), riding on the back of a small rocket, holding on by a rope.

So, I defined that vision to AI, and it gave me these:

Of course I did a bit of post production on each, and told it to put my blog name on the rocket somewhere.

Credits to deepai.org and the chibi-character-generator.

Shelby asked me to come up with some AI logos for their gun store business, showing gun smithing. So I came up with thirty round ones for them. The company name is Green Line Arms so I tried to incorporate a green circular line into them.

But it got me to thinking, is a line in the form of a circle, still considered a line? So I asked Microsoft's CoPilot A/I that question, and here was the reply:

"Interesting question! In geometry, a line and a circle are fundamentally different shapes. A line is straight and extends infinitely in both directions, while a circle is a closed curve where every point is equidistant from a fixed point called the center."

"However, when we talk about a "line in the form of a circle," it suggests we're imagining a line that loops back onto itself to form a circle. This actually describes a special type of curve called a "closed curve" or specifically a "circle" in geometric terms."

"In essence, while a circle can be thought of as a line that's been bent around to connect end to end, it doesn't fit the strict mathematical definition of a line anymore. It's quite a fascinating concept to ponder!"

I dug out my big heavy sub-zero Idaho coat, slapped on a stocking hat and gloves, and walked to the Dollar store this morning. It was probably overkill as the Sun was starting to warm things up, but I saw a guy walking around wrapped up in a blanket, so I was glad to have the stuff.

I picked up paper towels and ice cream and as I walked back, I thought about Trump, and the changes that are about to come down in this country I love. It's cold here in Florida, and that will change. I don't know where I will be living at the end of the month, and that will change too, but it's ok.

I'm just really glad to be alive, and to watch Americas transformation back to greatness. Besides my limited family, it's what drives me to carry on.

My relatives on both sides go back centuries, and I'm as American as you can get. I had relatives fight in the Civil War, my grandfather in WW1 and my dad in WW2. They all fought for the same thing, so that I can live a free life and fuck it up badly if I happen to.

California just hit the bottom of U-Haul ratings, more moving out and fewer coming in, than any State in the U.S. Kamala is going to run for Governor, and will probably win.

I was born and lived there for my first forty years. I have grandkids I've never met living there, and old friends, so I really hope the State survives.

You got to lose, to know how to win, and sometimes you never make it. I'm sitting in the garage Cave wrapped up in blankets with the little heater blowing warm air on me, and thinking about the homeless crowd waiting outside the soup kitchen down the street, in this bitter cold.

It took us about an hour to get ready and let the folks into the dining area around 0700, but this morning I hope they were allowed into the building early, just outside the kitchen. I can't imagine the despair they must feel.

I had to stop volunteering there because my mobility was embarrassing. There have been mornings I've thought about joining the crowd outside and coming inside for a meal, but my pride wouldn't allow it.

I actually have no pride left. As I sit here alone in the Cave I am humbled by the generosity of my grand-daughter, and ashamed of the drinking problem that has fucked my life up.

I haven't had a drink since last year and I plan on being able to continue saying that, as long as I can stay alive.

I've been diving into the latest version of my Filmora video editor, 14.2.9, and I love it! I was playing with some new AI features on that image I took of the homeless guy under the freeway between two porch posts, and ended up with this.

Here's the original:

Here's my Filmora desktop:

I own a license, so there are no watermarks...

I bought a video editor a few years back called Filmora and most of my YouTube work came out of it. I've avoided updates but I finally ramped it up to the latest, and it's nice.

Shelby had some video clips and images from a recent trip to the gun range with her gun store owning boyfriend, and asked me to throw something together.

The store is Green Line Arms by the Navel Base in Pensacola.

Here's the About page.

Anyway, this is what I whipped up today:

I dove into the free web based Kapwing video editor today. There was I time I could master this shit quickly and create great content, but I'm just not as good as I once was. Concepts are harder to grasp, and implementation is difficult.

After an hour my old head was spinning but I did manage to smack two videos together, one was a YouTube I shot and posted a while back, and the other was an MP3 from Dan's Google Drive using the Share link Shelby sent me.

So, actually not bad for my first hour.

I finally stopped sleeping on the foam mattress from my dead truck, that's been on the floor of the garage. I rearranged my bedroom upstairs and I've been there the last few nights. My watch said I slept well last night, and I concur, had some very deep dreams.

My body is still really sore all over and it sucks, but hey, it could be so much worse. I took a shower this morning and wandered out to the front porch, drinking water instead of booze, which I've sworn off of.

My homeless neighbor across the street under the freeway has got himself a chair. It sure beats sitting on a concrete incline, or up in the dark at the top. It's also Sunday so the food kitchen I used to volunteer at, is closed.

It's going to get rough here shortly as that cold and snow storm sweeping the country is descending on us. It's actually 70° here now, but forecast to drop down to the thirties by tomorrow.

I need to figure out a way to get him a meal, but unfortunately I don't have any extra blankets. Hopefully he will make it into the shelter.

Dan and Shelby want to create a promotional video for the gun store, and they would like me to help. Shelbs asked me what Video Editor I've used over the years, but the truth is, it's old.

We live in an amazing time now, and the tech has come along exponentially. So I asked ChatGPT How would I make a video using photos and videos from a Google Drive that's not mine, but I have permission to use them?

The concept is to use an online video editor to use online content created by a client and stored on Google, then create a video that could be uploaded to YouTube, and used on their website to promote the business, in this case, Green Line Arms Gun Store.

Of the bunch out there, I like Kapwing. They have a free version to get up to speed with and a $16 monthly subscription to create content.

Shelby and Dan can decide how they want the videos and photos from a recent range outing to be presented, come up with an outline, and give me access to the content.

I told them hell yea and that I wanted to be paid in THC infused mocktails. What an amazing world!

Had a great time up at Dan and Shelbys tonight, made some new friends, and won at Poker. Got a ride back home with Todd and its late so I'll blog about it tomorrow.

In the meantime, poker night:

Something funny happened as I was finishing up the computerized Medicaid and Food Stamps process today. For one thing, you better keep your facts and your numbers together, because it's fraud if you don't.

As a testament to how tightly our lives and our history are entangled in government servers, the last thing they needed to do was verify my identity.

They had three final questions, with about six or seven possible correct checkmark answers below each.

The first question was What's your sisters name? The question implies that it knows I only have one sister, and that she's still alive, otherwise it would have been past tense. Then the possible answers appeared and my sisters full legal name, was the third one down.

Then it asked Which of the cities listed below have you lived in? and the correct one jumped out. Same with At what address?

From a programming viewpoint, it's simple and slick. They have all of your original data when you applied for SS, like family members and your address, while they make up the rest. It's been more than ten years, and it's quick info only I would know.

I mentioned in a Post recently that I didn't want to be here in this house anymore. As it has become clearer, I realized I didn't want to be here, without Shelby. We were pretty settled in for the Summer and had a good time.

Then things changed, her job, a new man with a daughter, in another house, while I fell apart from losing my truck and mobility. But I'm pretty locked in now, I'm sustainable here as my legs are dying, and I dread moving out in a month.

Yea I know, I've had a hair up my ass to hit the road, find adventure, start a new life. Fuck that, I can barely walk to the store now. Maybe if I prove to have the balls to get sober, we could get another roommate.

I've been a smart, physical, loving man over my 78 years. Also an idiot, asshole and fool, with a fucking bottle at my side, most of the time.

Sometimes there were moments of greatness that I'm very proud I achieved, then times of absolute despair, embarrassment and wishing it was over.

I spent this afternoon at the Services place with a lot of needy people in a room, filling out applications for Medicaid and Food Stamps on computers, which could happen in a month if accepted.

It's been decades since I've been homeless, or on the dole.

I called the local SS today and got great news from an AI message bot. The average amount of time to retrieve and process all my medical records so I can maybe get Disability, is only 200 to 230 days.

The cherry on top is that the monthly COLA goes up 2.5% starting this month, which for me is a whopping $36.

There's a local Services place nearby that deals with Medicare and Food Stamps that I'll walk over to this afternoon.

And here's the really good news, I managed to pick up four non-organic bananas at Publix today, for only five bucks!

Update: I just had one over my cereal for breakfast, and it was hard as a rock. I have concluded that most Publix fruit really sucks.

The USS COLA ships out this month, and I wish there was a LIFA (Life In Florida Adjustment). I had this thought early this morning because my legs hurt so bad I couldn't sleep at all. That was the only advantage to knocking myself out in the evening.

Two of my three meds ran out days ago, but I still have plenty of the Parkinsons pills. I really don't know if that's causing the pain, but I'll call my new doctor and see if I can get them.

I'm also thinking I should just call SS and see what I need, to get on Disability, instead of going there today. I can still walk six blocks to the drug store.

Well this is pathetic, the last time I rode the old bike I almost fell a couple times. My balance sucks and my legs can't handle the slightest incline, so I've just been walking lately.

Next Monday thru Thursday it's dropping to 30 overnight, so I threw the covered sheet for the upstairs bed into tonights long overdue wash. I think tomorrow I'll stop sleeping in the Cave like I have been, and sleep in the warmer bedroom upstairs.

Anyway that's my first 2025 resolution day, and so far so good. It's quiet, lonely because of my lunacy, and the only person I spoke to was the girl at the Dollar Store when I bought laundry capsules.

When I saw the neurologist Henry Porter early last month, he said I was in good shape for a 78 year old guy with Parkinsons. He put me on a couple of vitamins which I've been taking, and which unfortunately are not helping.

The difficulty walking is becoming worse every day and the hand tremors more noticeable. Meanwhile the clumsiness and dropping things is comical.

I checked out nursing homes around here and they're pricey with an average of $2500 monthly. I bring in $1400 on SS so the only way that would work is to get on Disability.

So, tomorrow I'm walking (if you can call it that) downtown to the SS office and see what my options are.

I have decided to stay in Pensacola because my doctors are here and I have a Florida ID. Shelby is also here, and hopefully we can work our issues out down the road. In the meantime I have thirty days to find a solution.