It's never too late to start using Marijuana for medicinal purposes...as a 
pain relief it works amazingly well...I know quite a number of people with 
severe cronic pain issues who use it and can actually function while it has 
effect...IE being able to play guitar with arthuritis or shovel the front 
walk etc.
And compared to most farmasutical narcotic pain relief substances, it's far 
far better for you, non-addictive and healthier.
And no, you don't have to smoke it either...use the oil in food or sweets so 
you can ingest it without the less healthy side effects of smoking.
Marijuana cookies, brownies, hard candies or whatever are easy and simple 
methods of ingesting it.  And you don't even have to tell your kids or grand 
kids either hahahah.
Guns and weed, Collorado has it right lol.

Regards
Colin
-----Original Message----- 
From: Phil Scovell
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2015 12:25 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: An embarrassing ham moment

I had a really embarrassing experience today that should have never happened
to a guy whose been a ham right at 49 years.  I read a couple of left over
emails about 11 PM last night and went off to bed.  I'm not on as many
mailing lists as I once was so I don't get 300 to 400 messages a day
anymore; more like 30 to 40 at best.  First thing I noticed about noon today
was that I had no internet connection.  I did all the usual things,
including checking to see if my ear buds were plugged in just in case they
were cutting my speakers off but everything was fine.  So, I unplugged the
comcast modem I have, my other one died a few months ago, unplugged the
router, shut down the computer, plugged the modem for the cable back in and
plugged the router back in, and fired up the computer from a cold boot.
Nothing.  I did it a couple of more times and when nothing worked, I mean,
no internet access for mail or the web, I checked everything all over again.
Well, comcast has the automated phone menu thing that, if you punch the
right button on your phone, it will send a signal to jump start your modem.
If it sees you are dead in the water, it switches you to tech support.  The
pulse they sent out didn't help so it was still dead as a doornail.  Well, I
didn't want to call them for more than one reason.  I must admit, on the
other hand, that after today's experience, Comcast has greatly improved
their tech support services.  Plus, the last time they came out to check out
my dead modem to replace it with a newer one, the tech guy was super
friendly.  We talked about football, guns, the weather, and hardly anything
about computers.  He stood right here and used his cell phone to confirm a
gun buy he was making.  He told me, I forget what gun he was buying now, he
had to sell a couple of his guns in his collection to get whatever this
firearm was and this all do  to the bumper sticker my youngest son has on
one of his vehicles about second amendment rights he saw when he went out to
climb the telephone pole to check my cable.  Yes, the guy, and my 32 year
old son, are licensed, registered, and have concealed carry permits.  I know
more about guns and ammunition than I know about computers by just listening
to hams in Colorado and Texas and Wyoming and Nebraska and Kansas on 160,
75, and 2 meters discussing what they own for weapons.  We have lots of gun
shows out here, too, and every single radio station advertises firearms and
shooting ranges.  I've got a firing range almost within walking distance of
my home, no fooling, and I'm still in Denver city limits.  Of course, where
I live, you best have a sidearm just to walk out to your mail box.  I'm
kidding but it is almost true.  My kids, when they were between 8 and 12,
witnessed a shooting less than 300 feet from my front door.  How'd I get off
on all that?  Anyhow, so the tech guy for Comcast and I are on the phone.
He tells me to unplug the modem so he can see if anything changes on his
end.  Nothing happened.  He checks to see if there are any other outages in
my area.  None.  He asked me to read the model number off to him, this is
another reason why I hate calling tech support, and I explained I was blind
as a bat but my son had been over earlier that day and he said all the modem
and router lights were on and everything was showing good to go?  Another
reason why I hate calling tech support is due to my voice.  I developed some
vocal cord problems a couple of three years ago and talking normally is not
only difficult but frustrating.  Thank the Lord I'm a CW op so I don't have
to worry about jumping in to huge sideband pile ups I stumble across any
longer.   He asks me to unscrew the cable itself so he can check it again.
I tried screwing the cable off but the gun nut that replaced my modem a few
months ago, you know, the one who climbed the telephone pole just outside my
ham shack?  That guy must have used super glue or gorilla glue when he
tighten that sucker up because I couldn't even make it moved.  Since my neck
and spinal surgery 6 years ago, my hands are very weak and even trying to
drive a screw into wood is almost impossible for me now.  I would have
grabbed a wrench and tried twisting the thing off but between my boys
borrowing my tools, along with my grandchildren taking them off to play
with, I don't have even simple tools like screw drivers left.  In fact, I
just bought myself a 50 dollar Swiss Army knife last week off of Amazon with
13 implements, all stainless steel, and I made sure half of the tools were
useful things like a flat edge screw driver, a Phillips screw driver,
scissors, a couple of good blades and even a small wood saw.  This way they
will have to take it from me before using it.  The problem before was them
just borrowing my tools and forgetting to tell old dad and old grandpa.  So,
I explain this to the guy on the phone.  He says, fine, and said, "I can
wait on the line if you want to get your son to come and screw it off for
you."  My son was at work, I explained, so the guy said, no problem, let's
try it again.  So, I reach behind the cable modem sitting on my desk and
grabbed the plug.  As soon as I started to unplug it, I said to myself,
"Wait just a cotton picking second."  I was unplugging the dad blamed jumper
cable running over to my router and not the AC power cord.  Holy Cow!  I
couldn't believe it.  Some ham radio operator I am.  I almost began laughing
but I didn't want the guy thinking he wasn't doing his job so I explained I
had been pulling out the wrong plug, why, I don't know.  Yes, I saw that
square plug, whatever they are called, and should have realized it wasn't
the power cord but I decided later, I had a very good reason for making such
a simple embarrassing mistake.  First, I was in a lot of pain today for some
unknown reason from the previous spinal surgeries.  There isn't a day, any
longer, that I don't have back and neck pain for that matter.  I was hurting
so much, I bummed a couple of pain pills off my wife, who is going to have
hip surgery in a couple of weeks, and after washing them down with cool
mountain spring water, I tuned the bands and waited the two hours it takes
for the dump pills to even act like they are working.  If things don't start
working better, I'm going down to one of the Colorado Marijuana pot shops
and make a buy score some weed.  Guess what time I called Comcast tech
support.  I checked my watch and it was almost exactly two hours that had
passed as I dialed on my iPhone.  I knew I should not have called them but I
was tired of not figuring it out after 14 to 15 hours of being offline.  So
between the pain, and the pain pills that were beginning to work, not to
mention my age, and, oh, yes, the tinnitus I have due to the stress
generated by the pain, I was really not firing on all 8 cylinders.  I could
blame it on my blindness, especially when the guy asked me to look at the
lights and tell me what I was seeing after I'd already told him I was blind
but being blind had nothing to do with the event.  Plus, the way my voice
works, I sometimes sound like I'm 80 years old or more.  As we waited for my
old computer to cold boot for the second time, this tech guy and I talked
about the snow we've had in Denver of late, how nice the 60 and 70 degree
current weather was, how he was born and raised right here in Denver,
something unusual, the Denver Broncos and how we both hoped Payton Manning
would take Denver to the super bowl again since this most likely will be
Manning's final year playing football, and finally, my computer comes alive
and pulls down a mail packet.  Man, is my old computer slow.  I had to
explain all this about my computer to the tech guy and he probably figured,
by this point, I didn't have a clue.  I almost told him I started in
electronics when I was 10 years old and that I was a ham but I was afraid it
would draw a dark cloud over the ham community forever, plus it likely was
being recorded and I didn't want anybody to hear what I had done, but at
least now I have mail.  It is a good thing I'm not climbing towers any
longer.  I average 100 contacts using Morse Runner every day at 30 to 45
words per minute just to keep sharp.  Today was pretty dull, you might say,
but it was funny, even if it was embarrassing, too.  I am going to copyright
this email so I get a dollar for every person you forward this to.  Who says
you can't make money off of ham radio, haha.

Phil.
K0NX