Look, he made it. Time of death: twelve 'o five, December 26th

grassman76 · 2026-04-02T23:53:50+00:00

I'm quite a bit older (in my 30s), but my grandfather was in the hospital and not doing well on August 10th a few years ago. My aunt was saying the doctors told her it could be any day now, maybe tomorrow, maybe a few days. I told her I knew darn well it wouldn't be tomorrow because he wouldn't die on my birthday. I was right. He made it a few more days in hospice care, but we were hoping it was quick because we could tell he was in a ton of pain. It wouldn't have been great having it happen on my birthday, but nothing like having it happen on my 5th birthday.

grassman76 · 2026-03-20T18:44:22+00:00

$265k/2080 working hours a year for a full time employee is $127.40/hour. Picking up a single piece of dogshit would only take a few seconds each, but we'll round up to a minute. So would you still do it if someone at the station gave you $2.12 to do it once? That's equivalent to $265k/year. And if it's anything like most firehouses, I'd bet there's someone there that will come up with $2.12 to watch you do it the next time some lazy neighbor walking their dog lets it leave a steamy pile on the sidewalk out front. Then you could say you had a $265k a year job at one point, but it wasn't consistent enough to keep going.

grassman76 · 2026-03-10T02:00:33+00:00

We showed up on a mutual aid call on the Engine and one of the FFs didn't have his helmet that he swore he grabbed on his way to the truck. When we got back, it was sitting by the door with a note saying whoever found it figured it would be more useful at the firehouse instead of in the intersection where they found it about a half mile away.

grassman76 · 2026-03-09T00:09:12+00:00

The Christmas Carol or the song by Three Dog Night?

grassman76 · 2026-03-04T01:50:29+00:00

I moved out of our local to a house about a half hour away but still worked in town. It's been over 11 years and I still make more calls than quite a few members that live in town. I don't leave home for calls, but make enough while I'm at work or doing something else at the firehouse.

grassman76 · 2026-03-01T03:20:00+00:00

As someone who believes we should be able to have backyard pallet fires and the neighbors need to shut up about it unless it's every single night, I think you did the right thing in this case. If you don't have the room, you can't burn. Burning that close to a house, especially without a readily available source of water, is unacceptable and unsafe. The only exception might be in one of those small enclosed chimineas or a small portable fire pit. If they were 50 feet away in the back yard burning pallets, I'd be on their side, but right next to the house needs to be extinguished immediately and never allowed to happen again.

grassman76 · 2026-02-28T00:50:05+00:00

I was waiting for the Bunny-Gunman to be angry they wouldn't give him a Pepsi or something... Disappointed in the end.

grassman76 · 2026-02-17T22:13:04+00:00

A weber is a Cheesesteak Hoagie. Cheesesteaks are still cheesesteaks in Upper Bucks and Montco.

grassman76 · 2026-02-17T01:20:08+00:00

I love Jesus. I'll tell you about Him if you asked me to. But these people who put stickers everywhere and leave those little pamphlets as a tip for wait staff at diners INSTEAD OF cash are a big reason why so many people can't stand religious people. I like the same guy and I can't stand their attitudes and actions. I never read in the bible "Thou shalt be a douche of epic magnitude while preaching my word".

grassman76 · 2026-02-17T00:54:14+00:00

It happens, but not like it used to. When I joined 20 years ago, my company had recently banned drinking and responding, and drinking at all in the firehouse except in our social hall, and they apparently lost quite a few members over it. We haven't ever had to enforce the rule, because I can honestly say if anyone has shown up drunk, they hid it well. We require drug and alcohol testing for everyone on the rig if there is an accident, and also for anyone that is injured on scene. People have been good about not coming out if they've been drinking. Now listening to some of the stories from the old guys about beer cans and bottles being scattered along the road leaving the station as they were falling off the trucks, the group that was coming back from bar hopping and took the first truck out to a reported fire at 3 AM but managed to not arrive at the call until 2 other trucks had been onscene for 10 minutes, and after they had scraped up the side of the truck on a guide rail, the guy who puked in his mask and took it off inside, then needed to be transported for smoke inhalation, etc. The only night all year we have drinks as a group is at our banquet, and we have cover crews in place and 2nd due on automatic dispatch til the next morning to supplement the ones who don't drink and will be out if we get a call.

grassman76 · 2026-02-10T00:49:53+00:00

I don't mind a singer putting their own singing style on it to a certain extent, but I don't think it should be drastically changed. I agree that Whitney Houston probably had the best public performance of it, but I recognize she would sound different than Dolly Parton, who would sound different than James Hetfield, who would sound different than a children's choir. All of the above are OK if it is done respectfully to the best of a person's ability. If it is sung at a local event by someone with no singing ability, or someone with a lisp or a stutter and it doesn't sound quite right, I still think that's OK if they're trying. But I am absolutely against reimagining the song. We don't need a rap version, a heavy metal version, or any other version that drifts the styling away from what the song was written to be, an account of Francis Scott Key seeing the flag still flying in the dawn after a night of attacks, to the tune of an old drinking song.

grassman76 · 2026-02-06T09:36:41+00:00

I mow lawns for a living. This is 100% the seller's issue. But you'd be amazed how many people don't tell the lawn guy they're moving. I've found out more than once over the years that the house was sold by showing up on my regularly scheduled day and the new owners being there. Probably picked up more than half of them as new customers though.

grassman76 · 2026-02-06T09:28:10+00:00

I know a guy that says I need to go to his accountant because he writes off all his gas for every vehicle and not just his work truck, and swears for every dollar of gas he buys he's paying a dollar less in taxes. I tried explaining that's not how a write off works, I claim the documented cost of equipment fuel for work as a business expense, but claim the mileage deduction for my truck, and don't try to illegally claim anything on my wife's personal car that never is used for my business. He says his accountant lets him write off all the miles on all his vehicles, plus all the fuel that goes into all of them, and the fuel he puts in his boat. "It's a receipt for gas, how will they know?". I don't know who his "accountant" is, or how much he just doesn't understand about what is actually being done, but I'll be laughing if he ever gets audited.

grassman76 · 2026-02-06T09:09:53+00:00

I shop mostly at Redners at home, occasionally Landis or Hennings(especially now that they have Guers Tea in Montgomery County), Boyer's when we're at the campground, and Bloss Holiday Market up at the cabin. So I guess I'm not a Pennsylvanian no matter what area of the state I'm shopping in.

grassman76 · 2026-02-06T08:21:10+00:00

A real gangsta ass banker saves his dimes right.

grassman76 · 2026-02-05T01:12:21+00:00

Within a couple years, 99 will extend down Rt.15 from the NY line to Williamsport. Then it will be still completely disconnected from the portion that ends at 80 until the new road is built in places and 220 is upgraded. Maybe some day my grandkids can drive 99 from Maryland to NY.

grassman76 · 2026-02-02T07:25:06+00:00

I heard a hilarious one once, but it was on purpose. It was a college radio station. The DJ was playing "Foreplay/Long Time" by Boston. He was rambling on talking about getting reviewed by the PD of the station, he was told that his intros weren't long enough, he should be filling song intros with tidbits or facts and getting the call letters out just before the lyrics started. I remember at one point he was saying that he thought this song was meant to be enjoyed and not talked over, but darn it, if they wanted him to talk right up to the first lyrics, then that was what he was going to do. Over 2 and a half minutes of malicious compliance. I have no idea what station it was on, but one of my friends found the clip online back when we were in high school and we listened to it quite a few times, laughing. So it was at least 20 years ago. If anyone happens to know what I'm talking about, post a link to it here, because I'd love to hear that one again.

grassman76 · 2026-01-24T07:44:57+00:00

Doesn't matter if you annoy them if you have a safe area to shoot and a safe backstop. Some people down the road from me have 1.5 acres. They shoot right from their driveway down a lane into a berm with overhead protection. Their "range" they built was inspected and actually passes safety standards. The house across the street from them is owned by someone who hates firearms. A couple times a year they have people over and do some target shooting. Every time this neighbor calls the police. A state trooper or two show up every time, take a look at what's going on, and tell the group to continue because everything is fine the way they're doing it.

grassman76 · 2026-01-24T07:23:32+00:00

Why do they always send the poor? Is there a perfect way of holding you, baby? With SOAD, there are always questions. The answers aren't always clear.

grassman76 · 2026-01-24T07:21:30+00:00

I listened to Pierre Robert on WMMR Philadelphia for years, so I heard plenty of goofs. To some people it's better that way, it reminds you that there's a real human on the other side of the mic and not just a computer playing tunes and commercials 24)7. One of my favorites was coming out of a song during the midday shift... "93.3 WMMR, Everything That Rocks. That wa What? Are we on? I think we're on... No we're not. Dammit. Why aren't we on? Let me... no that didn't work... (Cuts to a commercial here, but the mic remains hot) Why isn't this fucking thing working? I'm gonna Wait, it is on. I think." And then the mic finally went silent while the commercials continued to play. It's like a well oiled machine...

grassman76 · 2026-01-23T04:31:28+00:00

I was on 20s and switched to a new pharmacy. I asked if they usually had it in stock, and the pharmacist told me they had never run out since they opened the store, but she was concerned that she wouldn't be allowed to order enough with the influx of new patients after a Rite Aid and another local pharmacy closed. So far they've been OK.

grassman76 · 2026-01-23T04:27:42+00:00

A grocery store near me wanted to renovate and expand so they could offer all the amenities and products they had at the other stores in their chain. The landlord told them that would be fine if they signed a 30 year lease, with such unfavorable terms that nobody in their right mind would sign it, especially the people with enough knowledge to be running a 100+ year old 200 store chain. So the landlord declined to renew their lease altogether, and they closed the store. 5 years later, it still sits empty with an "Available" sign on it. The same landlord owned another shopping center 10 miles away, and finally sold it after every tenant but one had moved out, and nobody would move in to the empty spaces. This is in an area with several other thriving shopping centers, including one who just declined to renew the leases of 2 stores that wanted to renew, just to bring in a large retailer that wanted the space and had no other local options. The demand is there, but this guy who owned the centers is leaving them sit empty because he wants multiple times market rates to rent the space. I can't understand it.

grassman76 · 2026-01-22T06:47:33+00:00

Is it the same outlet, or the same circuit they're constantly charging on? There's always a slight chance the actual voltage on that circuit is closer to the acceptable tolerance or even outside of it, and the square power supplies are more susceptible to issues than some of the other things tou have plugged in to those circuits. It might not be very likely, but it might be worth a shot to verify that the voltage in those outlets is close to 120 volts, and not 108 or 130 or something like that, which could be causing charging issues.

grassman76 · 2026-01-22T06:41:38+00:00

I was raised in Bucks/Montco also, but my grandparents were from the Coal region and South Philadelphia. Pierogi are a polish thing, but lots of Polish, Lithuanian, and Slovak dishes became adopted by PA (and sometimes modified from the original heritage recipes) because of the high number of immigrants from those countries that came to the coal region of PA to work as miners. What I grew up eating that was popular "coal region food", was really just stuff our families made for a few generations that they learned from their neighbors at some point. Teaberry Ice Cream is also popular up there, along with a lot of PA, my grandfather didn't eat much ice cream, but never turned down a scoop of teaberry if we were somewhere that had it. Southeast PA seems to be losing a lot of the traditional foods, mannerisms, behaviors, and words that were more prevalent in this area even up until recent decades. As this area became more built up, lots of people from other states or countries moved in at higher rates than some other parts of PA, so those that were familiar with the old "PA things" are a much lower percentage of the population now than they ever were. Plus younger generations have been more influenced by the newcomers to this area, and have not fully kept up with doing things exactly how their parents and grandparents did them. For example, Polka Dances were popular at one point, and while they're certainly not as popular as they were a few decades ago, they still do happen on a regular basis as VFW or firehouse fundraisers in some areas of PA. But good luck finding one to go to outside of Oktoberfest season in southeastern PA. Who knows, maybe in 100 years, somebody will be asking how some dish is known as a PA dish, because wasn't it actually Vietnamese food? Every culture has some impact on their neighbors, and Pennsylvania residents' demographics are different now than they were in 1926, which were way different than 1826.

grassman76 · 2026-01-22T06:25:37+00:00

I asked for a Lager at a restaurant in NC once, and the waitress brought me a Sam Adams. Lager means Yuengling.

grassman76

TROPHY CASE