Every few months, some big wig in the media world knocks on my online door, asking for assistance in their quest to Market Survivalism To The World.

In nearly all cases, these “assistants” to the decision makers are looking for options, but almost always, when it comes to “Survivalism” and “Survivalists”…they are looking for that Main Stream Media version of Survivalists…you know the kind…camoflauge, guns, missing teeth, scorn of the government, etc, etc, etc.

I truly believe that FOX is looking for that flavor of individual..er, uhm…family…for TRADING SPOUSES…as the email below will show…

Give it a shot if you want. $50k is on the line for the LUCKY family selected for this “Wonderful Opportunity”.

As for me and my family…uhhh…we’re going to pass this time…yes, the money would be wonderful…but at what expense to our family and friends? Personally, I don’t think it balances out.

Ya’ll have fun!

Hello,

I am a casting associate for FOX’s hit show “Trading Spouses.” I was checking out your website and was hoping you could help me out in my search. I am looking for hardcore survivalists and their families to participate in the show which highlights the wealth of cultures and personalities from households across the country. The show requires that each family consist of at least one child between 6-18 years of age and have two parents within the home. At the end of the 7 day shoot, each family receives $50,000! If you are what we are looking for, or know another family that is, please contact me. If you have any questions regarding the show, check out the website at www.fox.com and click on the “Trading Spouses” icon.

Our deadline is approaching FAST and I would love for families to have this amazing opportunity. Thanks so much and I can’t wait to hear from you!

Thanks a lot and take care,

Jason

Jason Eskin
Casting Assistant
Trading Spouses
Rocket Science Laboratories
323.802.0485
JasonE@rocketsciencelabs.com

Al’s not happy that his global warming movie isn’t doing good at the box office!!!

After much prodding the past year or so, I was able to talk my wife Annie into actually starting her own blog. I’ve had a Wordpress blog set up for her since early last year, but she had never done anything with it, and nary a post was made.

Until this week, that is.

After watching my Google Adsense income take flight this spring, after doing some testing, retesting, and tweaking, I had a thought…and a very good one at that. I thought, wow…what a wonderful time for Annie to share HER wisdom with the world, and with that great Adsense tool, make some income for our family to continue thriving, based on her wonderful and caring perspective on life, from her point of view.

You see, Annie is disabled…and has been in a wheelchair for several years now, due to an injury received in a car accident in Alabama (where we lived before moving to Wyoming), nearly 14 years ago. Her injury came about when we were rear ended on a county highway overpass, at Exit 100 on Interstate 20 in Bucksville, Alabama, waiting to turn into a gas station. Her hip was injured, and diagnosis was not fully made until about five years later, by a very good bone doctor. During this same accident, I earned a broken back (compression fractures in the vertebrae between the shoulder blades), my daughter a broken arm, and both my boys suffered with cuts and contusions.

By the time the damage was actually proven with good xrays, the top of the femur at the hip joint was dying, and the hip socket itself was grossly pocked with extreme calcium buildup, making any movement of the hip very painful.

This was in 1999.

Now, 7 years later, Annie has been in a wheelchair full time for almost 4 years. During this time, she has also earned TWO college degrees, helping our kids move into the adult phases of their life, kept ME fed and clothed, and helped us keep working towards our own home based business, with growing success each month. And, she is now a grandmother of two adorable kids.

Also during this time, we have moved 4 times ( once across the country in 2000 ), been homeless for a few weeks (Spring of 2001), and started over again…twice. And throughout it all, she has been the key to us making it to the next phase of our lives.

She has been through a lot, yet has a LOT to share for others who may be going through the same things we have gone through. With my background of prep and survival skills, learning self reliance the hard way, and my extreme research skills, I’ve brought a lot of new found knowledge into the family.

She’s had to come to a lot of it the hard way, from the point of being disabled, taking care of meds and doctor needs on a very small income, and learning to let go of a lot of things…and grabbing the horns of bigger issues, and wrestling with them on a grand scale…i.e. dealing with the administration of Central Wyoming College, and getting their attention regarding the very disturbing lack of awareness about accessibility issues all over this campus.

She puts a lot of effort into helping others (much like I try to do on a daily basis) and doesn’t notice so much some things that she needs to focus on for herself…others first is her thing sometimes…

I love my wife dearly, and in a few short weeks, we’ll be celebrating our 25th anniversary of marriage.

I hope that you will support her in her blogging career, and that she will be able to reach out to folks the world over, and help them become more self sufficient, personally enriched, and successful individuals….disabled or not.

You can visit her blog here…

The news today has us thinking about bigger things….bigger than we can imagine at times…

The good news for now, is that Near Earth Asteroids don’t seem to be as much of a threat as they were yesterday, thanks to research from the Japanese Space Agency, and their Hayabusa probe. Even though the probe mission had problems, we learned some useful insight into the actual makings of a near 700 foot wide asteroid (it’s not as solid as we thought).

“The results were very interesting and shocking,” said Akira Fujiwara, a scientist on the Hayabusa team from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA. “To mitigate asteroid threats, it will be very useful in the future.” Fujiwara and his colleagues published their findings in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

I see that the Wordpress programmers have released a new update to the open source Wordpress blog software package today, to fix some security issues, and even give users a taste of what is in the upcoming release of 2.1.

2.0.3 of Wordpress includes:

Small performance enhancements
Movable Type / Typepad importer fix
Enclosure (podcasting) fix
The aforementioned security enhancements (nonces)

Upgrading is fairly simple, just overwrite your old files with the latest from the download. When you go to your admin it will give you a link to update your database.

Doesn’t seem like much on the outside, but of the many blogs I am running (over 15), I’m running 1.5.2 for this blog and a couple more, while the rest are v.2.0.1. I need to do a little catching up.

In other news, MSNBC has a disturbing article about the health problems being reported and measured from the 1st responders who suffered all kinds of environmental toxins at Ground Zero, and inhaled a toxic cocktail of asbestos, mercury, silica, fiberglass and other potentially hazardous materials released when the twin towers collapsed.

On to the wild side…there is continuing talk of the US attacking Iran this summer is coming around again, this time from Prison Planet and Alex Jones. A Former CIA Analyst Says Iran Strike Set For June Or July, according to Ray McGovern. Read some of the tripe McG brings to the world, of reasons why this attack may, or may not, occur….

Personally, anything Alex Jones brings to the table, I will ALWAYS take with a grain of salt. I don’t know of a SINGLE news item he has released that has PROVEN to be true…always conspiracy…always an EEEE-vil Federal Government….ohhh…scary….

For those of you looking at career opportunities, and with an interest in digital video, I’d like to recommend a very cool and quite helpful magazine called Digital Video. Click the link and sign up for a completely FREE subscription. Let me know if the link doesn’t work for you…I hope it does. They ASKED me to share and recommend it…and I do appreciate the knowledge I’ve gathered from it…give it a try.

And now for something completely different…

Tom Flocco is a nut job. Completely.

I hope you’ve heard of the REAL reason for the shut down of the Capital in DC this week, due to “gunshots” being heard there.

The national news covered it here…and here…

Tom has a completely different alternative reality, which involved spies, terrorists, bombs, the shut down of the rail lines between DC and NYC, and a passel of Secret Body Shop Guys being flown in under cover of darkness….well, you will just have to read it for your self…..ewww….

That’s it for now…

More regular daily postings to follow…

I’ve been recovering the past couple of weeks from this past semester, and haven’t been posting as I should.

It’s called “exhaustion”.

Three solid years of 17 to 20 credit hours per semester, climaxing in two solid college degrees, two national recognitions of scholarly work (New Century Scholar for Wyoming 2006, and All-USA Academic Team/2nd team), and finally been voted back into Student Senate and becoming the CWC Student Senate President for the 2006/2007 school year. Did I mention that I’ve been working an average of THREE part time jobs each semester?

What, you might say? Didn’t you just graduate?

Well…yes…BUT, these two college degrees are Associate of Applied Science Degrees. I’m beginning work on my junior and senior college years, online, with Upper Iowa University this fall. Being an accredited online degree, I can stay here at CWC, and continue working on campus as the Student Radio Station Operations Manager at KCWC-FM, 88.1, The Stargate. I can also continue doing local volunteer work with the high school, city, county, and state, as well as freelance work for Wyoming Public Television.

In other words, the continuation of my college education towards a Bachelors of Science in Emergency Management, to be followed by a Masters in Homeland Security (also 100% online), can be done from the very dorm at which I’ve been living here with my family for the past three years.

Some of the classes that I need for my B.S. can also be taken right here on campus, as CWC and UIU have a collabortion agreement (pdf) (which also means I get a tuition cut, among other things).

Because of THESE classes (psychology, sociology, spanish, etc…classes I didn’t need for my applied science degrees), I can continue as a student…and therefore, a student senator…and student senate president.

So, I have a plan…and I’m sticking to it.

At the same time, I’m going to continue doing what I’ve been doing for three years here on campus…helping my fellow students learn how to be more resourceful, better thinking, and happier students, while learning how to help others while they help themselves…

A very cool opportunity.

More later…