September 11, 2001 - Have you forgotten?

I'm writing this in response to a blog posted by a friend of mine.  Check it out here and then read on.

Have you forgotten?  I'm serious. Everyone uses the cliche "Never forget" but do we really remember how that day changed our lives -- forever? Well, it did change out lives forever but I think some people are forgetting. Not forgetting that the buildings fell. Not forgetting that radical Muslim terrorists flew planes into those buildings and into the ground.  Maybe not forgetting how everyone came together on Sep. 12 and the following months.

But slowly I think peoples memories started to fade.  Politics is back to politics.  On Sep 12 everyone -- everyone -- wanted to go after those responsible.  It became the "in thing" to support going after Bin Ladens head.  We had been attacked on our soil.  This isn't how it's supposed to be.  They threw the first punch so we need to punch back and punch hard - so hard that they can't hit us again.

So we went into Afghanistan to get those responsible beginning with the leader - Osama Bin Laden.  Some conspiracy theorists will question why we were prepared to launch this mission in what seemed like moments after the attacks -- implying the attacks were staged as justification to launch the preplanned attack.  Malarkie(sp?).  During the 1990's the CIA was already active in Afghanistan - trying to find Bin Laden.  How close they ever got to him I'm not sure but apparently they were never given the green light to take him out so I guess it didn't matter.

Why we never got him - I don't know.  Would Sep. 11 have never happened if Bin Laden had been killed?  Possibly.  But then Oct. 11 or Nov 11 or Dec 11 would have gone down in history instead.

These people HATE us.  I don't believe it's all muslims but there is a group of them that is taught from an early age that America is evil and Americans should be killed.  These are the people that put Sep. 11 in the history books.  Have we forgotten?

So here we are, 8 years later.  What has changed?  (My use of that word "changed" is kind of funny given the current president and all the change he promised people)  Anyway, we're still running around trying to get Bin Laden.  Well at least that what it seems like to most but the recent disagreement between Obama and Gen. McCrystal over the need for additional troops -- makes me wonder if we're really trying to win.  The general that Obama appointed himself has stated a need for more troops to complete the mission.  The president apparently disagrees with that assessment.  Has he forgotten?

We're actually going to try some of those radical muslims that admitted they were instrumental in the planning of those attacks.  Military court?  Nope - United States federal court system.  They're going to get the same rights that they profess to hate.  Why is this?  Is it a question of whether we're at war with these people?  There is no question in my mind.  Yet this president, who is reluctant to send more troops to fight the war against the people that brought down our buildings, slipped away to Asia while his appointee for Attorney General Eric Holder announced he's giving these scumbags the full rights of American citizens.  Once again an example of Obama's henchmen doing his dirty work for him.  Supposedly Obama was not consulted by Holder before making the decision?  No?  I find it hard to believe that the two aren't on the same page.

Holder was asked what would happen if the defendants were found not guilty?  His response - "Failure is not an option."  So this is just a little bit confusing.  In the American justice system you're innocent until proven guilty, right?  Holder is somehow implying that the men are guilty and will be convicted - don't worry American public.  Is this great judicial system, which they want to flaunt to the world, no more than a side show?  Apparently the prisoners expressed their desire to plead guilty in a military court and had asked to be put to death.  Now, since they'll be on a world stage, they are going to plead not guilty and use the opportunity to pander their anti-America propaganda.  The US military is going to be made out to be the bad guy.  The defense attorneys, if they are going to do their job, will explain about the "torture" (what a joke) used against these poor men.  They will describe the "horrible" conditions at Gitmo.  Have they all forgotten?

I could go on but I'm getting too mad.  So much of this does not make sense to me.  There is more going on that meets the eye.  This administration has shown that they are not about the change that their leader so brazenly professed this country needed.  It's about more than that -- it's about the change they need to make to further their agenda......what exactly that is has yet to be seen.

We had a president that, if nothing else, kept us safe from further attacks.  He had not forgotten.  He had his faults but he definitely had not forgotten.  But the public grew weary of two wars and a weakening economy and decided it was time for a change. Change for the sake of change.  I love it.  Who is Obama?  What has he done?  What change does he stand for?  What's he going to do besides bring home our troops and close Gitmo, give health care to everyone and grease the palms of the SEIU?  It doesn't matter - vote for him - he's not Bush.  I can't tell you the number of times I heard people say "It can't get worse."  Oh really?

I believe the people in the current administration have not forgotten 9/11 and what it meant to this country.  They simply choose not to remember.  That kind of silver tongued twisting of words reminds me of someone........any idea who?.

Well another Thanksgiving is upon us. The delicious looking bird to the left is ours from 2007. I decided (last minute as usual) to put together a little slide show of pics from previous Thanksgivings at our house. In doing so I decided to try to watermark each image with the date it was from because I figured that would be one of the most common questions posed while watching the show - "oh wow - what year was that from?"

I tried a couple programs and while a couple would definitely do the job I wanted something that would be flexible and that I could use over and over again no matter what the occassion so I kept looking.

What I I found was Batch Photo Watermarker by EasySector. You can download a trial version that allows you to try it out for 50 images before it becomes crippled. I didn't realize this or I would have only tested one or two as I played with all the options.

I did read, however, that you can do just what I'm doing here - post a link to their website - and they will send you a free registration key. I'm hoping I do get a key because from the little I've used it - I'm impressed. It's simple yet powerful. The only thing I'd like to see changed is the ability to extract the date from the EXIF data and be able to modify the way it's displayed more than just the two ways currently supported. Other than that - nice little app!

I'll post again with the results of the free code request.

P.S. EasySector - I hope you read this soon and send my code along - I'm trying to get this slide show put together for tomorrow am!

World ending in 2012? Why? Because the Mayan calendar ends in 2012? Well many computers were going to "end" when our calendar rolled from 1999 to 2000. This was simply because when people were designing the programs, storage was at a premium so they decided to cut a corner and not account for the first two digits of the year. 1900 and 2000 looked the same to a computer - 00.

So why does the Mayan calendar end on Dec 21, 2012 @ 11:11pm UT? It counts the number of days since their beginning date - August 13, 3114 B.C. It goes in cycles of 5,126 years. They use the following units of measure:

kin = one day
uinal = 20 days
tun = 360 days (18 uinal)
katun = 7,200 days (20 tun)
baktun = 144,000 days (20 katun)

July 20, 1969 — the date of the first moon landing — would be written as: 12.17.15.17.0
(baktun).(katun).(tun).(uinal).(kin)

Dec 21, 2012 on the Mayan calendar would look like this: 13.0.0.0.0 People who understand the calendar say Dec 22, 2012 would be written as: 0.0.0.0.1.

So like the much hyped Y2K phenomena, the cycle is just going to repeat.....the date rolls over to the beginning again.With Y2K, the fears were SOMEWHAT justified because so many things relied on computers for calculations - airplanes, satellites, etc. If calculations went awry then perhaps some of these systems would have failed which could have ultimately led to a domino effect of planes/satellites dropping from the sky causing a lot of havoc. Possibly. These computers are based on the Gregorian calendar - not the Mayan calendar.

So while all this doomsday stuff is interesting to read about - I still haven't seen anything that makes me think anything is going to happen. I welcome any evidence to the contrary.

One of the many things that currently occupies my time once everyone has gone to bed is online surveys. I've gotten myself hooked up with a company called Opinion Outpost. It didn't take all that long to get my account set up and start receiving surveys. It did take a little while to (and I'm still not done) set up my profile responses. These are essentially dozens of questions in different categories (Personal Health, Vehicles, Shopping, Travel, etc. The theory is that the more information you provide here - the more likely you are to receive surveys that you'll qualify for. If I were to guess I'd say that I qualify for maybe 50% of the surveys at most. I just qualified for a video survey Saturday but I didn't have the time to complete it. It was to watch a 15 minute video segment (I think from a movie) and then I was going to be asked questions about it. It was for 60 points. Points on this site can be turned into cash anytime you accumulate 50. 10 points equals $1.00. The image here is of the first check I received and I just hit 55 points again and requested another check. I requested the first one on 2/14/2009. They sent it on 3/5/2009 and I just received it today, 3/9/2009. Also, I must say that many times I don't respond to the survey in time and it has already been closed. So I could potentially be making more $$$.

Well, I made my third attempt at making maple syrup yesterday. The weather was decent.....the kids were sick (we had planned to go skiing at Jack Frost)....I had the ambition. I was able to coax JT outside to go up to the campsite with me. I knew I had some cinderblock up there so we hopped on the 4-wheeler with some rope and headed up. We found 5 blocks so we made two trips. The winter wheat is starting to turn green so I didn't want to do too much damage (too much weight might cause the wheels to dig in more than normal?). We decided to set up by the wood piles so that while it was boiling I could so some splitting. As we started laying it out on the ground we realized we were going to need some more blocks. A quick phone call to Bubba and we had a few more and were in good shape! The following pic was taken at around 1:30pm and shows what we came up with.



As I was standing there, taking in the scenery, I decided to take the following shot which shows the make-shift fire pit, the 4-wheeler, the remaining sap and in the distance, my truck full of wood.



Here's how much sap we started with (plus what was in the pot). I actually had another bucket full that I had to dump out because I never got to boiling it. What a shame!



So I kept myself busy by splitting wood and feeding the fire.....splitting wood and feeding the fire. JT, Dylan and Malcolm came over at one point and wanted to go for a ride on the 4-wheeler and of course I oblidged. Time passed and before you knew it - it was time to go to Nana and PopPops house. It was actually perfect timing because the rain started moving in. It was just a very fine drizzle but I started shutting down the operation. I actually had about 9 quarts of raw sap left in the bucket at the time but since it was a week old I decided to dump it. I carried the pot in the house and set it on the stove. I'd get back to it after our visit.

So once we got home and got the kids in bed, I resumed the operation. The shot below was taken just before 10pm. This is what was left of just about 11 quarts of sap.

The thermometer I bought seems like a nice one (lots of labels at various temps) but when I get down to as little syrup as I have it doesn't register correctly.  It's because there is a mark part way up the stem which is where it registers the temp.  I dipped a spoon in when I thought it was getting close and when it started to kind of stick on the spoon I figured it was ready.  

I initially filtered it using coffee filters as can be seen below -- taken at around 11:10pm.

With Christl's help I had it all done except what was left in the last filter.  I tried squeezing what was left with a spoon as you'd do to a tea bag.  Well I pushed a little too hard and GUSH!  The filter ripped and a bunch of gunk dropped into the jar.

So I dumped the syrup back into the pan, warmed it up again and this time I just used cheese cloth.  The finished result - as seen below @ 11:47pm.

Michael Phelps - you know what I find kind of disturbing about all this........even Bill OReilly missed to boat on this one.  I watched a replay of one of his shows from late last week in which he had guests on discussing whether or not Kellogg's made a FINANCIAL mistake by firing Phelps.  

It's sad that it's all about money anymore.  No one is questioning the negative impact this is having on kids that look up to the guy as a role model/hero/whatever.  That's the kind of standard these guys should be held to - act like a role model for the future generations.  Instead of talking about that, everyone wants to know if sponsors will be hurt financially.

Like it or not - it's against the law what he did.  So you can argue whether or not the law is just but IT'S THE LAW.  You cannot have a society that chooses which laws to follow and which ones to ignore.  

Sad.

Feb 1, 2009 - It goes without saying - this was a blast! I just wish someone else knew how to drive so I could have gone for a ride!

JT doing what JT always does....pushing the envelope.  Wonder where he gets it?

Feb 1, 2009 - I almost forgot to post this one. This is just a quick shot of Dylan helping me cook breakfast on the wood stove. That day we had panacakes and bacon.....all cooked on the stove. Gotta love it. Also, can you believe how big Dylan is getting?

Feb 1, 2009 - Christl helped me bring in a load of wood again.
This time I tried stacking it differently so that we could fit more and it
seems to have worked nicely. Admittedly I didn't take my time stacking
the "lincoln logs", as Dylan referred to them but they did the trick nonetheless. As of today, they're still standing...although the front one is only about two or three levels high at this point. And while on the subject of wood - NO - the heat has still not run. This is an amazing streak without the heat running......dating back about an entire calendar year. The recent warm weather is really making me want to get out and bring some more wood down. Next order of business - I NEED TO FIND A TRUCK!

January 25, 2009. The pond has been frozen for a couple weeks in a row and the skating has been great. JT was rippin' around as usual. Dylan was a pleasant surprise - not only asking to join us but doing a great job of joining in the games. Normally he has a tendency to shy away from the games but to his credit he hung in there.....sometimes playing goal, sometimes 'D' and sometimes up front. We had a near record turnout today despite not having the changing hut from two years ago.

OK - I just got done venting to Christl about this but decided it wasn't enough so I decided to post this........

http://uk.reuters.com/article/autoNews/idUKTRE5136YP20090204

I'm sure you've heard about this program - analog tv is going away.  What is analog tv you may ask?  Well, I don't even think Granny had analog tv there at the end.  If you don't have cable and/or a box on your tv used for changing the channels, you probably have an analog signal.  Yeah, not many people.

So for whatever reason, the government decides to get involved in this (this started under Bush) and try to "help out people" by issuing $40 coupons to help people buy digital sets.  Ok, I don't agree 100% but I'll deal with it...ignoring how much money has been spent on advertising and printing and mailing those coupons.

But now.....NOW.....they're delaying the cut over.  Why?  WHY?  Because "about 13 million" people are holding expired coupons AND the government has run out of these coupons and millions of people are waiting for coupons.

Now the silver lining to this story is that the government was somehow able to raise something like 19 BILLION - BILLION with a 'B' dollars by selling off the old analog airwaves.  But - how much has been and will be spent on this whole freakin' program?

I'm sorry - this is not food or clothing or even child care or something essential.....this is T.V. we're talking about.  And I don't want to hear any arguments about not understanding the program or not knowing about it.  If the tv is so important then they've most likely been watching tv.  And if they've been watching they've seen the commercials.  No TiVo's involved so they can't be skipping over commercials.  The deal is simple.- you go to the website - https://www.dtv2009.gov - fill out a form which consists of your name/address, how many coupons do you want (you can actually request TWO) and that's it.  You then have 90 days to use the coupon(s).  Oh, and for those without internet access......1-888-DTV-2009.  And I'd like to see a report of the number of coupons that were requested via the online order form.  The people can pay $20 a month for internet access but can't afford a one time $40 converter box?

Ok, I'm kind of calmed down now.  Comments welcomed.

 Christmas as a parent -- this is what it's all about!  This afternoon when I arrived home from work I was handed a little orange piece of paper by Dylan.  It kind of showed up out of nowhere - he didn't say anything; just handed it to me and said not to "let anyone else see it until they've read theirs."  So I began to read it and it's something I'll never forget.  As small as it may be, as insignificant it may seem in the grand scheme of the universe, reading this at that moment meant everything to me.  We all get those emails that remind us that while we may be tired from a long day at work, mad at something or someone, we need to remember that our actions have an impact on the little ones around us.  Well this is proof right here.  So I know for sure that when my kids ask me to read a story to them once in awhile because I "read them different than mommy does", it really means something to them.  And this note is the way an 8-yr old says that.

Merry Christmas everyone!

 
Well, we noticed the first ice on the pond this morning. I took these shots with the stream at my back, looking north towards the house. What a beautiful day....brisk but beautiful! Today we made Kraft Mac&Cheese on the wood stove! I believe the list right now is: Eggs, bacon, pancakes, jiffy pop popcorn, hot dogs and now mac & cheese. Awesome. Oh yeah, we slept in a little this morning so when Christl went down to check on the fire it was 'almost' out. It was two hours later than she normally would have been down....about 8:30am The temp in the living room was 63 but by noon I had it up to 69.

Here's a picture of us at the dam at the southern end of Peck's Pond taken April 18, 2008. I'm looking sort of ENE at this point....standing on top of the dam. This has become tradition now - once we leave the dock we head down here to putz around a little. We usually see snakes under the rocks next to the damn wall. There are also wild grapes growing all over the place. Peck's Pond has given me hours or relaxation and entertainment over my lifetime. My dad took me when I was younger and now I'm taking my boys. It's such a relaxing trip (for the most part) and just great to get out and enjoy the ourdoors.


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A lot has happened since my last post. One thing recently is that I participated in the 1st Annual Hockey Fights MS hockey tournament in Burlington VT. That was July 25-27, 2008. I didn't take a camera but hopefully I'll be able to get some pictures from someone that was up there. We lost all 4 games but I had a great time playing and met some really nice people.

Tonight Malcolm came over to watch Star Wars Ep VI. The kids have all been watching the entire saga from Ep 1 over the last couple weeks. I watched about the last 15 minutes with them....that stuff never gets old for me!

My 4-wheeler is down at Blackman's getting looked at. I'm hoping to once again get it running. I tried cleaning the carb several times and finally got frustrated.

I also started a woodpile outside behind the shed this weekend. The theory goes that wood kept out in the sun and wind will dry much faster than if kept inside. We'll see. I have a pile 3 feet high - about 20 inches wide - and 24 feet long. By my calculations that's about 126 cubic feet. A standard cord of wood is 128 cubic feet. My camera is in NJ getting fixed - hopefully I'll get it back soon and I'll be able to take some pictures of the new pile. I bought 4 galvanized 3/4" pipes and mounted them on boards that were left over from David and Chrissy's pool landscaping. It looks pretty cool.

Also, in the time since my last post I've created accounts on Facebook.com and MySpace.com