If you think this video is a joke, well, it is mostly. But I’ve got similar stories (not all from July 4th – many come from New Years also)…

• We rarely used a bottle for bottle rockets. My favorite was a 5-foot piece of round bamboo I used like a bazooka.
• We would break the stick of a bottle rocket into a right angle and place it on the street. No one knew where it’d end up chasing you.
• We would lauch bottle rockets from our hand by lighting them, playing chicken with the fuse, then tossing the rocket into the air timing it right so when it launched it would go up. The only things that would go wrong were if it turned and lanched straight back at you or if you waited too long (or had a short fuse) and it blew in your hand instead.
• I remember climbing a tree to launch a few bottle rockets by hand from the top of the tree. It was all about how high we could get them.
• I had a friend light a bottle rocket and stick it in the hood of another friend’s hooded sweatshirt. Freaked the guy out, rung his ears, and burned a hole in his hood.
• My friend who lived behind us and I would have bottle rocket wars firing them into each other’s yards to see if we could hit each other. Instead we’d usually catch the innocent neighbor’s yards on fire. But we’d stomp them out quickly.

I’m sure I have more stories but just can’t think of them now.

Stay safe, peoples!  And be careful in the rural South. I’ll tell you what!

Today I found out (while setting up a friend with a website) they dropped their 3-year host plan, but right now the 12 and 24-month hosting packages are on sale for $4/mth!

This is a screen grab of part of the recipt after signing up my friend:

So if you’ve thought about switching to a self-hosted website (like Wordpress.org), this is a great deal. And I wouldn’t tell you if I didn’t believe in it and use it myself.  I have no idea how long it’ll last.

If you do it, please use this link as I will get credit for the referral. Thanks.

Billy DeBeck coined the term in his hugely popular 1920s comic strip, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, about a community of backwoods hillbillies and moonshiners. It first appeared in a 1923 strip where Barney tells someone to “get that stupid look offa your pan. You gimme the heeby jeebys!” It meant “a feeling of discomfort.”

Other phrases coined by DeBeck: “horsefeathers,” “hotsie-totsie,” and “googly-eyed” (after Barney Google, who had huge, bulbous eyes). The strip also gave us the nickname “Sparky,” from the name of Barney’s horse, Sparkplug. (Many young comic-strip fans were given the name “Sparky,” among them, Peanuts creator Charles Schulz.)

via Comic Origins of Phrases – Neatorama.

The death of Michael Jackson is moving. I’ve loved his music for as long as I can remember knowing about him. Like most, that attention span happened during Thriller. But going back to Off The Wall and the stuff the Jackson 5 put out – it’s rare I find something I don’t like (except the song Bad). He was the best musical entertainer in his prime. I still listen to his music all the time and love the mashups that DJs make of MJ music.

But there was a deeper side to MJ. I used to joke “His music is awesome, but he’s a freak”. I take that back. He wasn’t a freak. I feel more sympathy for him now…especially as I was reminded of his life in these great posts below.

The Daily Dish – Thinking about Michael

Crocker Chronicle – Michael Jackson Dead at 50

Now I realize just how much of a performer he really was.

The Sahara Desert in Africa is the major source for African dust (or Mineral Dust) floating across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and South America each summer. I’ve been in Puerto Rico during one of those summer “dust clouds”. The sky is hazy but more reddish than grey.

However, it’s the north-western end of the sub-saharan Sahel Belt in Africa that can be a factor in Atlantic Ocean temperatures. The Sahel’s rainfall is a variable compared to the Sahara so if there’s more rain, there is less dust blowing from the African coast.

How does this effect the formation of hurricanes? Dr. Jeff Masters reports that when there is more dust, the water temperatures can fall by a full degree Celsius. Hurricanes need warm water to form, so more dust means cooler water temps.

Therefore the amount of rain in NW Sahel effects the amount of dust that blows over the Atlantic which effects the water temperatures which effects hurricane formation.

Got all that?

So what does it look like this year? There has been more rain in NW Sahel so there’s less dust so the water temps should be warmer so the likelihood of hurricane formation increases. But here’s the good news: the dust level won’t be as low as it was in 2005. You remember the 2005 Hurricane season, don’t you? Do the names Wilma, Rita, and Katrina ring a bell?

Also see Dust from Subsaharan May Affect Frequency of Hurricanes. Originally tipped off from the FriendFeed Hurricane Room.

For some reason I ended up learning about fermentation. There’s some complexity to fermentation, but I think I got it boiled down to this formula/process:

Carbohydrates + Yeast + Time = Alcohol

I found it interesting that if you add yeast to almost any carb and give it time, you’ll get alcohol.  Check out this real basic list of what kind of alcohol you can end up with when you start with different carbs (or read this list like this: “when you ferment this carb it can yield this alcohol”):

• Apple yields Hard Cider
• Barley yields Beer
• Corn yields Whiskey
• Grape yields Wine
• Potato yields Vodka
• Rice yields  Sake
• Soy Beans yields Soy Sauce
• Sugar yields Rum

Of course there are different kinds of alcohols for each carb because depending on the variety of the carb (ex: different kinds of grapes) plus variations in the fermentation process yeilds different alcohols.

I dunno, just found it interesting.

Public Beach in Key West on Flickr – Photo Sharing.

We needed the trip. I needed a reboot. It’s been a tough, crazy, stressful bit of time lately and we just needed to get away. So we found a cheap hotel in the Keys and went for it (we booked it on Hotwire so didn’t know the reviews were so bad – it was about as reviewed!).

The “Upper Keys” start with Key Largo and they are about 300 miles from our house. The “Lower Keys” end with Key West and it’s about 400 miles from here. So even though they are close, they aren’t a day trip there and back. We decided to stay in the “Upper Keys” in Islamorada for 2 nights so our drive there wasn’t too bad and that gave us a full day trip to Key West and back.

I have some observations and highlights for you.

OBSERVATIONS

The Florida Keys are awesome, but it depends on what you want to do. If you’re big into fishing and diving, it may be the best in the country. But it’s a long way to go for beautiful beaches and drives. Central Florida offers great alternatives: the causeways and bridges in Tampa are just as beautiful, the beaches in the Sarasota area (like Siesta Key) are perhaps even better than the Keys, and the Cape Canaveral National Seashore offers similar and closer land and marsh.

The Keys offer isolation and that can be good or bad depending on what you’re looking for.

Going down we took I-95 all the way to the end then merged onto US-1 the rest of the way. Although it’s not that far from the end of 95 to the Keys (about 40 miles), there are A LOT of stop lights! Coming home we bypassed it on the Florida Turnpike! But I wouldn’t have it any other way for it makes getting to Mile 0 that much more fulfilling.

I know Key West is known for Jimmy Buffet stuff, but I barley noticed any Parrotheading.

I don’t care what the books and reviews say, the Keys are hot.

The end of US 1 at Mile 0 was kind of anti-climatic. It just ended at a regular intersection. Cool nonetheless.

HIGHLIGHTS

I had 4 goals to accomplish:

1. Make it to Mile 0 – the end of US 1 that runs along the entire East Coast
   
2. Have great Key Lime Pie in Key West
   
3. Have good Conch Fritters
   
4. See some Key Deer
   

Other highlights included driving over the 7-mile Bridge, miles and miles of scenery, actually petting a wild deer, and going to the southern-most point in the US (barring Hawaii).

There’s more photos with a few stories from our short trip on my photo blog.

But the best highlight of all was experiencing all of this with my beautiful wife by my side.

During the summer months, the Earth heats up very unevenly. Down toward the equator becomes much hotter than the poles creating a huge heat imbalance.  The Earth does everything it can to keep in balance, and hurricanes are natures way of creating a balancing act. Without getting to technical, The atmosphere attempts to remove this excessive amount of heat energy through latent heat release. A hurricane is essentially a massive heat engine that transfers the high oceanic heat content into the atmosphere by releasing that stored heat via condensation.

However, I can probably speak for most of us and say, “just not here, mmk?”

source: MyFoxHurricane.com blog via the FriendFeed Hurricane Room and Hurricanes Happen

Guess where we’re planning to move if the house sells soon?

Hey look!  It’s Jacob and ol’ what’s his name! So what is his name? The show didn’t tell us, but the fans have come up with a lot of names for him.  Here’s some I’ve found. What names am I missing? Leave a comment…

• Jacob’s enemy
• Jacob’s nemesis
• Not-Jacob
• Un-Jacob
• Anti-Jacob or AJ
• Not-Locke
• Un-Locke
• Fake Locke or Flocke
• Mystery Man or MM
• Esau (as in Jacob and Easu)
• Samuel (casting call name used)
• Man in black (Johnny Cash? Heh heh!)
• The god in black (my name for him)

Many of the rewatchers are blogging and I found this bit very interesting from Get LOST with JOpinionated:

Continuing with the prevalent Black and White theme that has permeated Lost since the beginning…we must now ponder the two pairs of Christian’s shoes that seemingly play a very symbolic and noteworthy role in the entire series. Jack placed white tennis shoes on his father in the coffin before Flight 815, and he placed his father’s black shoes on Locke in the coffin before Flight 316. Given Jacob in his white frock vs. Mystery Man/Not-Locke in his black frock

So Jack gave Christian Shepherd white shoes in the coffin while Jack gave Locke black shoes in the coffin.  Could it be that Jacob, the ‘god in white’ has been using Christian’s body on the island while the ‘god in black’ has been using Lock’s?

Well we know the latter is true, so what about the former?  And does the color connection give us the tip of who’s doing what?

Fun to ponder. Don’t be shocked if subtle clues like this are intentional in this show.

This last season was incredible and just as good if not better than season 1.

So if you’re wanting to either start or get back into it, I’ve put together an Amazon.com store where you can purchase all the available seasons of LOST on either DVD or Blu-Ray.

Do yourself a favor and pick up your copies and get LOST! You won’t regret it!

That’s why last August I created the Hurricane Room on FriendFeed to serve as a comprehensive yet useful resource for hurricane information.  The site automatically imports updates live from various sources that I’ve found reliable.  Here’s the list of what is currently imported:

It’s my opinion that these are some of the best resources to keep tabs on tropical storm updates in a live river of news.  You’ll see live updates from the National Hurricane Center, official tips and help from the Red Cross, and some weather expert opinions all regularly feeding into the room.  These are sources that I trust to be relevant and valuable.  There are other great sites to track storms but do not publish updates that can be imported like these.  I encourage you to keep your eye on those sites as well.  Here’s a list of some I pay attention to as well.

I would like to encourage you to do one or more of the following regarding the Hurricane Room on FriendFeed:

• Bookmark or save the web address and check in every so often
• Share the site with friends and on social networks — especially those who could be effected by these storms
• Join the Hurricane Room by joining FriendFeed. Doing so effectively turns the site into a discussion board for you where you can comment on any post or create your own
• Subscribe the the room’s RSS feed. Be warned though, this can get loaded up quickly during a storm!

I just want to provide a way to help us all be aware and be safe. Watch and join the FriendFeed Hurricane Room.

Below is the best chart I’ve seen that tries to capture the strength and damage predicted for hurricane categories (click it for a larger view)

It’s been a roller-coaster ride for quite some time but it’s been slowly moving downhill for most of it. We’re now at that point where we have to put this in motion and see where we end up.

We still continue to serve clients through Orangejack LLC and we both continue to look for full-time work (Rob’s resume, Patricia’s resume) in Orlando, Greenville, SC, and Northern Virginia. We have family in SC and VA so we can move in with them to start right away if needed. And of course there’s always a chance of finding a full-time job here and then we can take the house off the market. And I can take my business with me anywhere since it’s Internet-based. If the house sells quickly, we’ll move to the DC area right away. It’s like a race to see what huge thing happens first.

But we need stability. We can’t continue at our current pace.

The tough part about selling a house in this economy is that our house is competing against those that went through foreclosure and short sales. It’s not fair to us who have kept up the house and never missed a payment, but our house is worth less because other houses are being sold for 10’s of thousands of dollars less. They are our competition.

So if you know anyone looking to move to the Orlando area, pass this along to them. It’s a great house in a great location.

You can find more information about the listing of the house at the Orangejack Mall.

Front of the House

Backyard / Conservation Area

Springfield Punx is a little pet project of mine. The idea of doing fan art parodying some of my favorite characters and stars in such a fun and simple style got me hooked immediately. Some of these guys and gals have appeared on the Simpsons and I could just work from that, but most I had to do from scratch.

This week he did a series of LOST characters.  It’s almost as if these characters showed up on The Simpsons!  Funny stuff…

• Hurley
• Charlie
• Ben
• Locke
• Kate
• Kate
• Sawyer
• Jack

I hope he does more!

• It seems that Jacob is the leader of both Island LOST and The Others.  
• The Others are in opposition to Dharma.
• It also seems that Jacob is the one that brings people to the island.

It could stand to reason then that Jacob is responsible for bringing both the Others and Dharma to the island.

We know the Others look to Jacob as their leader, but, in a way, so does Dharma.  Remember Karl and the brainwashing in Room 23?  Dharma was using a video that had the screen cap “God loves you as He loved Jacob”.

It just feels like to me that even Dharma has a reverence for Jacob, but why?

I keep going back to the conversation that Jacob had with his nemesis:

YouTube – LOST 5×16 The Incident – Jacob and Rival

I really think that conversation is really important to the whole story of the island.  I mentioned before, I really think that both Jacob and the other guy dressed in black are the two gods of the island. Here’s the transcript of their conversation:

 

GRAY-HAIRED MAN: Morning.

BLOND MAN: Mornin’.

GRAY-HAIRED MAN: Mind if I join you?

BLOND MAN: [Shaking his head] Please. Want some fish?

GRAY-HAIRED MAN: Thank you. I just ate.

[The gray-haired man sits down not far away.]

BLOND MAN: I take it you’re here ’cause of the ship.

GRAY-HAIRED MAN: I am. How did they find the Island?

BLOND MAN: You’ll have to ask ‘em when they get here.

GRAY-HAIRED MAN: I don’t have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?

BLOND MAN: You are wrong.

GRAY-HAIRED MAN: Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.

BLOND MAN: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.

[The gray-haired man stares at his compatriot.]

GRAY-HAIRED MAN: Do you have any idea how badly I wanna kill you?

BLOND MAN: Yes.

GRAY-HAIRED MAN: One of these days, sooner or later… I’m going to find a loophole, my friend.

BLOND MAN: Well, when you do, I’ll be right here.

GRAY-HAIRED MAN: Always nice talking to you, Jacob.

JACOB: Nice talking to you, too.

 

It just seems so epic that you have one guy in white, one in black, talking as if they are the ones in control of everything. One (god in black) can’t kill the other (god in white) for an unknown reason, meanwhile the other (god in white) brings people to the island to the utter disgust of the other (god in black).

Could Jacob possibly not be all that of a good god? He brings people to the island who, in the words of the god in black, will fight, destroy, and corrupt.  Just look at the island folk – all of them fight, destroy, and are subject to corruption. If he’s right about Jacob sets all this up, this paints Jacob in the light of a god pitting people against each other just for kicks (or in the name of “progress”).  So could it be that the god in black isn’t necessarily motivated to kill Jacob but to stop the madness? Of course it takes his death to stop him, but the focus is to stop him.  

Of course it could be a power grab, but from this angle, it almost feels like the god in black could actually be the good guy.  The people on the island are either following Jacob thinking they are good guys fighting to please Jacob or save the world through experiments.  And they follow/respect him because he brought them to Island LOST — even if they don’t know it.

I don’t know where this leaves us, but it sure is fun to think and talk about.

• So from the beginning, it seems there are 2 ‘gods’ on Island LOST. Jacob is the ‘good god’ dressed in white, an unnamed god dressed in black. From the beginning the god in black has wanted to kill Jacob but can’t. In order to do so, he has to find a loophole in the ‘rules’ I suppose.  So he finally figured it out when dead Locke crash landed on the Island.
• The “shadow others” are aligned with Richard who are all aligned with Jacob (there is no 3rd team). Don’t know why they came to the island, but once there, they needed to “out” the god in black by exposing the loophole he found. Which I guess means that the real others of the island are Jacob’s followers. Frank could be a candidate to join the others – to be a ‘convert’ so to speak.
• Back to the opening scene where Jacob and the other ‘god’ were talking…I suspect that the first time Jacob brought people to the island was the Black Rock. My hunch is Richard was on the ship (maybe the captain) and Jacob decided to keep him around. The god in black said bringing people to the island would be trouble. Jacob didn’t care and that anything that happens is progress. I can really see the split in these two guys, and they talked as if they were above people — that’s where I’m getting this god analogy.
• Ben was right: “dead is dead”. Just ask the shadow others.
• The scene where Ben confronts Jacob so reminded me of when Job confronted God after all the hell he went through and God’s reply put Job in his place. Jacob similarly did the same thing when he said “what about you”?
• We won’t see Rose, Bernard, or Vincent again. Their story is over.
• It was sad to see Juliet die, but I called it. I wish I was wrong, but she died just like Jack in the movie Titanic. Her story is over. When they got off the sub and she looked back, she knew it was over. She’s never going home. It was at that point I think her fate was sealed.
• Off-island, Jacob physically touched the ones he wanted to come to the island.
• Knowing more about Jacob now, I don’t know how Christian Shepherd fits into the island mystery.
• I have no idea where we’re going to go from here. The end flashed to white instead of black (did you notice?). Could that be an indication that things are back to good? Next season can go anywhere. But I can’t wait!