7:25 pm - Thu 24 Jul 2008 
Archive for the 'Happenings' Category
…for not posting to my very own blog lately. Because of that, you deserve a little update from Wyoming.
Since my last posting in early April, many things have happened. I graduated from Central Wyoming College with another degree. I lost my job running the college radio station because of that (bad timing, that…), which I have been doing for over three years. Sadly, my professor, boss, and good friend Dale Smith, after becoming blind due to complications from chemotherapy, spent the last few weeks of the semester in the hospital, getting out the day of graduation. He also had his job at the college changed from electronic media to humanities by the CWC powers that be. He’s doing better health wise, but I’m concerned for him as a friend, and will check with him regularly to see how he is doing.
The day after graduation, the wife and I and grandson loaded up a 5 by 8 Uhaul trailer for my daughter, and left for a cross country trip from central Wyoming, to Nashville, Tennessee, where she was moving. A nice leisurely trip there, got her unpacked and moved in, and then drove south to Birmingham, Alabama to visit family there that we hadn’t seen since our move to Wyoming in 2000. We spent 3 days there, had a wonderful visit, and still with the Uhaul in tow, headed west to Dallas, Texas…actually Plano, which is the northern boundary of the huge DFW metroplex. In Plano, we visited my mom and sister, and wife’s dad and step mom and brother. Stayed there for about 5 days, and then with the Uhaul loaded with tools from my late dad’s workshop, (which I spent 2 days cleaning out for mom) and a few pieces of furniture, we headed back north, home to Wyoming.
Then things got exciting. This was the day that the huge tornado hit in northeastern rural areas of Denver. We had spent the nite before in Raton, New Mexico, and had just hit Colorado City, and the rest area there for lunch, when I got a call from a good friend, whom we had just visited the day before in Ft. Worth, as we were leaving the DFW area. He was watching the news and weather, and got the news about the Denver twister forwarded to me by cell phone. In Colorado City, I couldn’t find any wifi for a net connection, so we headed north to Colorado Springs, the home of Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson Air Force Base. Got off the highway there, checked the McD to see if it had wifi…nope. Then, having spent several nites in various Super 8 hotels across the country the last two weeks, found one on the west side of the interstate…and yes, wifi.
I got on, hit weather.gov, and then the Denver area radar and Nexrad. Holy crap…the storm cell system I was seeing in real time was the WORST storm system I’d ever seen, as far as having to personally deal with it Real Soon Now, by having to get through it to get home. The super cell that hit Windsor, Colorado, was in an anti-cyclonic rotation, and was moving counter clockwise, and heading towards Laramie, Wyoming, which was our connection from 287 to Interstate 80, and places west. Warnings were posted in the Denver forecast page of the current storm, tornado, damage, direction, and so forth, and it just didn’t look good for us.
We heard on the radio about the storms and damage, and decided to take Highway 287 up through Fort Collins..getting of Interstate 25 asap. That took a while to get to, and just as we got through town, and about to get on the highway itself north of Fort Collins, the highway was shut down due to a bus and semi accident. We got detoured through the little town of Laporte to the east, and hit the highway AGAIN, north of the major accident.
All was going well for about 20 minutes. Then, we started seeing a lot of snow on the sides of the road…LOTS of snow. Next, we started seeing vehicles heading south from the summit on 287, with what looked like snow on their front bumpers and windshields. Weird. The skies to the north and east were astoundingly stormy and dark. Sunset was approaching quickly, and the storm clouds hastened the effect. Just then, I realized that what we were seeing on the sides of the road wasn’t snow…but HAIL….INCHES of it. Totally blew me away.
As we kept heading north on 287, it started raining lightly, and soon quite moderately. Within moments, the medium pouring rain was joined by small snow pellets that exploded quietly on the windshield of our car. As it got heavier and darker, the snow pellets turned to pea sized hail…and then to actual snow…and then to VERY heavy snow. The road conditions were deteriorating the closer we got to the summit, and the rain slick roads become ice slicked and then slushy fairly quickly. A group of cars, trucks, and a couple of semi’s (with us in the middle of the convoy) kept plugging along, at about 20 miles an hour, all of us with flashers blinking into what literally turned into a blizzard.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, we hit the crest, and started down the miles long hill that led down into the south side of Laramie. Strangely, it was dark…where it wasn’t supposed to be. Seems that the supercell from Denver/Windsor, dropped another tornado, which tore up some houses and a couple of farms, and took out a few hundred blocks of power. We stopped at the Flying J truckstop to gas up, cleaned the snow and ice off the front of the car and the trailer, and hit the road on I-80. The snow, sleet, and rain stopped about 20 miles west of town, and from there on home, it was very dark, and very cold. Throughout the last 200 miles of our trip, from Laramie to Riverton, the roadway was clear and safe, but the sides of the road held quite a bit of storm passage…meaning snow as far as the eye could see…all the way to Beaver Rim, and halfway down that 9 degree grade of that steep hill.
We arrived home around 3:30am, dragged ourselves in, and went to bed.
It took us a week to recover from that 3600 mile trip. Holy crap we were tired.
Since returning home on May 23, we’ve been busy working on getting ready to move into a new apartment in town, packing boxes, cleaning our storage unit out, and doing a lot of computer work.
And, oh yes, SUMMER college classes…Society and Self from U. Wyo, History and Statistics from CWC. 10 credit hours during the summer session.
THAT’s what we’ve been doing since April.
More to be added later…including some great news about the SurvivalRing website project.
Rich
I’ve learned this morning that as of March 31st, 2008 (Next Monday), that EBay is ending ALL sales of digital products…that is to say, any EBay auction that provides the buyer with the ability to DOWNLOAD the item after payment.
This is a sad day. This affects MILLIONS of EBayers, many of whom were making a living selling their digital goods from home. As a creator of many digital products (ebooks, scripts, templates, etc), I am truly offended with EBay and how they handled this announcement.
As of today, you can NOT list an item as a digital good. The alternative they provide for now is ONLY that digital product sellers must use CLASSIFIED AD format, at $10 PER AD. Supposedly, these ads will show up when people search for digital goods.
If it’s not obvious, I’m not a happy camper about this. I created an EBay store last year, and have been paying $16 a month for the privilege of selling items at a slightly lower listing fee. Needless to say, it has been a losing proposition, and ever so much more now.
Here are some links to learn more about this horrible decision by EBay management…
From EBay’s forums…
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000671814&start=0
Other Links…
Sometimes it DOES pay to get out of bed VERY early…1am
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I’ve been having a bit of trouble sleeping the last couple weeks, and tonight, I dozed off before midnite, while rocking my nearly 2 year old grandson to sleep.
My daughter Laurie is working two full time jobs right now, days at the main book store here in town on main street, and half the weekend and evenings at one of the Community Entry Services homes as an assistant.
She is socking away funds for a move from Wyoming to Nashville in May, and just bought her first new car 2 months ago.
We live on campus here at our college, and our bedroom window view is of the main parking lot. I normally park my 92 Towncar in the curb slots right outside our window, about 30 feet away. My big conversion van is in the middle row about 30 feet or so past the Towncar, and is directly in our view out of our window.
Well, tonight we had an “incident”…another in a series of “happenings” that has affected us personally in the five years we’ve been here (earning 7 degrees between us).
First incident was a dwi driver backing out of a curb side space two years ago in a Toyota 4×4 pickup, and totalling dear daughter’s Grand Am, which was parked straight and legally in a parking space, occuring just after midnight one nite.
Second incident was a police chase that ended in the parking lot outside our window, with the alledged perp diving out of a full size Suburban to run into the campus dorms to hide and being tackled in the grass by a fleet footed cop, and the still-in-gear Suburban t-boning the car parked in the EXACT spot where my Towncar was TONIGHT!
This third incident tonight, was the first DIRECTLY focused at me.
A slim, tall, black hoodie wearing fellow was seen BY MY DAUGHTER (who was looking out the bedroom window right at this moment, having just come home from her second job around midnite)…trying to open her car door (which she dutifully locks EVERY day). Her car was parked literally in the next curb side space next to mine.
The Hoodie-”Hood” then turned to my car, on the passenger side, and tugged on the passenger door handle, which wasn’t locked. The door opened, and he then stooped down so as not to be seen.
Dear daughter is looking DIRECTLY AT HIM, while she is 8 feet from our bedroom window, in the door to our room, and she says “they’re breaking into our cars”…at this point, I’m wide awake from the first restful sleep I’ve had in days.
I open my eyes quickly, and see her bolt for the front door, which opens into the courtyard of our dorm building. I jump out of bed, grab my jeans and mocasins, and dance to the front of the apartment on one leg trying to put my shoes on. I check my car before hopping in, and see that my cheap little Ipod charger has been yanked out of my dash…which is the only thing of value in the car. Perp saw the pretty blue LED light glowing and HAD to have it.
By the time I get 40 feet down the sidewalk to the breezeway walkway to the parking lot, and then the 50 feet to the parking lot curb, she’s already out into the street that comes up the side road from Main Street, which is fronting the entire college campus. I jump in my car, just as shes coming back to the sidewalk out of breath, and she says the perp has run across the field, to the College Hill apartments, which are a quarter mile west of us. These apartments are fairly new, but are mostly Section 8 housing (*low subsidized rent).
I start the Towncar and literally tear across the parking lot, out into the street, and make a quick right, then a left, which brings me to the first row building, where a gentleman is standing outside smoking.
I screech to a halt, roll the window down, and ask him “did you see somebody just run over here”? He says “Yep”.
I park the car at the curb, and run over to him and see if what he saw was what my daughter described. “Yep”. He and his wife live in the west end of this building. He’s seen the perp going into an apartment stoop 4 doors down, after hearing my daughter yelling at the idiot moron across the field as she was chasing him in stocking feet…no shoes.
As I’ve dressed and run out the door, dear wife has called 9/11. Not 45 seconds after I first say something to the smoker, the first local cop pulls up right behind my car, spotlight on me.
Smoker Guy and I point to the door where the perp has gone. As cop #1 has started walking over to that door, Cop #2 comes around the corner down the street, and #1 radios him to go BEHIND the building, to keep an eye out for runners.
2 minutes later, a Sheriff’s deputy drives up behind #1’s squad car and gets out.
#1 and Deputy knock on the door for a good twenty minutes before someone opens up. They go in, and have a couple of people come out and SIT on the stoop while they check the apartment.
Another five minutes…#1 comes back to me (daugher has JUST walked over from our building) and he says “I’m gonna ask you the hardest question you’ll have tonight….PLEASE tell me you had something stolen from your car….”
I said “yep…my Ipod charger”… and he asks “Missing a cell phone?” and shows a shiny new cell phone…which ain’t mine.
Daughter tells him the description of what she saw in my car and who she was chasing after.
He goes back in that apartment, and comes back out about 10 minutes later…holding my Ipod charger.
He says there were 10 people in that apartment (that no one was wanting to answer the door of), and that FIVE of the people inside matched the description of what daughter saw.
He also says they’ve found a STASH of LOTS of stolen car stereos, phones, and other items inside…who knows what else.
Long story short…I’ll get my charger back tomorrow at the police station, after it’s photographed for evidence.
Chances are, there will probably be drugs involved, and probably some ICE stuff, too.
From now on, even though that car is parked right outside my window, I’ll be locking the doors EVERY time, and will be looking for a good paging alarm system.
And, I’m proud of my daughter for not just standing there, and taking off after an evil-doer (she is in one of those moods lately of “Don’t f*** with me” because her senior level college classes are stressing her…and this dude is REAL lucky that SHE didn’t get her hands around his neck…
And, kudo’s to the cops…showed up like lightning…caught the perps…and retrieved my stolen goods back for me, and will be returning a lot more merchandise to folks who were hit previous to tonight…
Well, the clock on the wall says 3am…two hours after this all went down…and I’m gonna crash.
Moral of the story…lock your doors, even in pleasant extremely rural locales…know your neighbors, and don’t be afraid to meet them and make new friends…and most of all…if you can do something….DO IT.
Don’t let criminals get away with shite…track’em down, catch’em in the act….and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.
I don’t let little things go unnoticed very often, but the principal is the thing…I earned the money to buy that cheap little charger. I could replace it next payday. But, perps like the one caught tonite HAVE TO KNOW that there are some of us who WILL “make their day” one to remember…
Rich
I’m not sure why, but I’ve spent a few hours the past few weeks reviewing my life, and future plans and what I would like to accomplish with the time I have left.
Not sure why I visited this inner conversation, but I did, and I came up with some remarkable personal observations, answers, and subsequent feelings. I’m not afraid of the future…far from it. I embrace whatever life has to offer me…whether it’s 5, 10, or 30 years more.
Then today, I came across this video presentation. Yep…I agree with this professor on every level. This is the full 1 hour, 45 minute speech. Take time to watch it soon.
Enjoy.
Rich
P.S. See the ENTIRE professor’s speech here…
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3633956
Click on the menu to the right to see parts two, three and four.
In the last two days, there have been one successful terror attempt (no deaths) at the Scotland Airport, two vehicles rigged to explode in London (both found and defused before any casualties), and great concern for those kinds of things happening in the US.
According to Michael Chertoff, the Director of US Department of Homeland Security, there is no valid information suggesting that there might be similar attempts of the same kind. His comments as of this morning are:
At this point, I have seen no specific, credible information suggesting that this latest incident is connected to a threat to the homeland. We have no plans at this time to change the national threat level, although we remind everyone that the aviation threat level has been raised to orange since last fall.
The Glasgow incident (eyewitness video) was witnessed by many, and involved at least two individuals who dorve the blazing Jeep Cherokee vehicle into the departures section of the main terminal of the airport Saturday afternoon.
In the Friday incidents, two different vehicles parked near nightclubs (actually only a few hundred yards away) were rigged to explode, yet failed to go off. Had they been rigged to create a secondary attack, where first one bomb goes off, and when the area is swarming with first responders and onlookers, then a second device explodes killing even more? I’ve yet to see this suggested in media, but it makes sense. With this in mind, it does seem to have all the earmarks of Al Queda connections.
According to Foxnews,
it emerged that a 53-page document alerting businesses to the threat posed by VBIEDs — vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices — had been issued to police two weeks ago. It had been passed on to the Tiger Tiger club only a few days before yesterday’s events.
The incident also appeared to be foreshadowed by a posting on an Internet forum used by terrorists, saying: “Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah. London will be bombed.”
Because of these events, the UK has raised their alert level to its highest rating of Critical Threat, which means “an attack is expected imminently”. Over half a million closed circuit cameras cover London, one of the most surveillance capable cities in the world. Given this fact, it should come out sometime in the next few weeks that video of the culprits has been found, leading to quite a bit of action in tracking them down.
Until then, all of us should remain vigilant in the US for similar activities, especially given this weekend of Independance Day celebration.
Be careful out there.
Rich
EDIT UPDATE ONE: I did receive a reference from at least one source that the multiple vehicles COULD have been intended for a layered, delayed, secondary attack.
EDIT UPDATE TWO: The complete story from the Daily Mail can be found at the Daily Mail website. It has on the seen photos of the terrorist actually on the seen and being doused with water by responders.
After being offline for a few months, I have finally been able to replace our dead forum board, with a brand new state of the art forum system called the Invision Power Board.
We HAD been using IkonBoard 3.1.1, which suffered massive unfixable security issues, and upon trying to update many different ways to the latest version of 3.1.5, it promptly committed suicide. Hundreds of spams a day were being injected, and the Ikonforum team in the years since I had originally installed the software no longer existed or cared for full path upgrades. This was very disconcerting, and painful to loose so many useful posts.
I was able to save the data in a database, but attempts to salvage them coherently into the new software haven’t been fully successfull…yet.
But… the NEW board is COMPLETELY operational. I’ve already got two new moderators, and more to come.
Jump on over to the SRCC (SurvivalRing Community Center) and register a username and start posting away.
The more the merrier…
Rich
Founder - SurvivalRing