Work Stuff...

It has been very busy since i got back from vaca.  I was on day shift, but got the call yesterday morning that i am going back to Night shift that i was previously on.  I cant wait until the end of the month as my uncle and Grand Parents are driving from Texas to visit me for a week. More on that later this weekend...

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RMSTringer
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Swift Creek Reservoir

This is the lowest levels that i have seen since moving here in December 2005. IF we do not get any rain soon, we will be placed on Water Restrictions.







We have lots of Canadian Geese that live here year round. The lake we live on is the water supply for Chesterfield County. It is called Swift Creek Reservoir. We have not had an substantial rain in the past several months.


This coves in the lake is getting shallow and the geese are taking advantage of it. Even though the weather gets hot here, the geese do not seam to mind the heat.







What is your opinion?

Thanks...

Thanks for keeping me on my toes "Anonymous." Sometimes i forget to do that and i try to be very good about giving credit where it is due. I just want to thank you for your patronage and pleas continue reading and making comments on my posts...


What is your opinion?

Custom Ring Tones on Verizon.

I am not sure if this will work on every Wireless Network or cell phone, but it works with my LG vx8600 phone. It has a slot for a MicroSD card. I purchased a Lexar MicroSD card but there are many choices. Mine came with an adapter as most card reader will not accept the MicroSD format. I have placed pics, music and the such on it. I bought a 1gig chip for under $30 at Wal Mart. The phone gives you the option to move all saved material from the phone memory to the card. I have chosen to do that.

There is a folder called "My Sounds" on the chip. I placed the custom Ringtones in that folder that i made using Sound Forge and encoding them at anywhere from 40-96kbps depending on the length of the clip. I had to redo a few of them as they were to long. You will have to place them on the MicroSD car via your card reader. So you make them and how to get them onto the phone?

There is no feature that will let you import them. So, you have to make a Pix Message and it gives you an option to attach a sound file with it. All clips have to be smaller than 200kb or they will not work. All you have to do is enter you own cell number as the recipient and and send yourself the message. The ringtone will come to your phone and it will give you the option to listen and also to save as a ring tone.

This is a picture of a MicroSD style card.

What is your opinion?

Lady Bird Johnson passes away in Austin, RIP.

I, being a native son of Texas was saddened to hear of her death. She will be missed.

AUSTIN, Texas - Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady who championed conservation and worked tenaciously for the political career of her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday, a family spokeswoman said. She was 94.

Lady Bird Johnson returned home late last month after a week at Seton Medical Center, where she'd been admitted for a low-grade fever. Her husband died in 1973.

She died at her Austin home of natural causes about 4:18 p.m. CDT, said Elizabeth Christian, the spokeswoman. She said she was surrounded by family and friends.

She was hospitalized with a stroke in 2002 that left her with difficulty speaking. But even after that she continued to make public appearances and in May attended an event at the LBJ Library and Museum featuring historian Robert Dallek.

In March, she listened from Texas through a conference call when President Bush signed legislation naming the Education Department headquarters building in Washington, D.C., after her late husband.

The longest-living first lady in history was Bess Truman, who was 97 when she died in 1982.

‘Grace and ... elegance’
The daughter of a Texas rancher, Lady Bird Johnson spent 34 years in Washington, as the wife of a congressional secretary, U.S. representative, senator, vice president and president. The couple had two daughters, Lynda Bird, born in 1944, and Luci Baines, born in 1947. The couple returned to Texas after the presidency, and Lady Bird Johnson lived for more than 30 years in and near Austin. "I think we all love seeing those we love loved well, and Austin has loved my mother very well. This community has been so caring," Luci Baines Johnson said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2001.

"People often ask me about walking in her shadow, following in the footsteps of somebody like Lady Bird Johnson," she said. "My mother made her own unique imprint on this land." Former President George Bush once recalled that when he was a freshman Republican congressman from Texas in the 1960s, Lady Bird Johnson and the president welcomed him to Washington with kindness, despite their political differences. He said she exemplified "the grace and the elegance and the decency and sincerity that you would hope for in the White House."

Championed the environment
As first lady, she was perhaps best known as the determined environmentalist who wanted roadside billboards and junkyards replaced with trees and wildflowers. She raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to beautify Washington. The $320 million Highway Beautification Bill, passed in 1965, was known as "The Lady Bird Bill," and she made speeches and lobbied Congress to win its passage. "Had it not been for her, I think that the whole subject of the environment might not have been introduced to the public stage in just the way it was and just the time it was. So she figures mightily, I think, in the history of the country if for no other reason than that alone," Harry Middleton, retired director of the LBJ Library and Museum, once said.

What is your opinion?

Ten Reasons Why You Shouldn't Buy an iPhone

I love this!! As you know, i am not an I-PRODUCTS person! I saw this and had to post it!!

By: Jim Lynch

These have been the weeks from hell as far as iPhone hype goes. Over and over and over, we've all been subjected to more and more iPhone blather. Enough already!

It's time to cut this stupid phone down to size, once and for all! And mark my words, that's all it is ... a stupid phone!

It is not a cure for cancer, it will not bring peace to the world, it will not feed the hungry or provide homes to the homeless.

It's a freaking phone and it's high time somebody drew a line in the sand and said: Thus far and no farther with the iBlather!

Here are 10 reasons why you should NOT buy an iPhone. No doubt the Apple cultists will flame me for saying it like it is, but it's about time somebody did.
So here is why you should avoid this vile piece of over-hyped crap:

10. Too Expensive
Is Apple kidding us? $599 for a freaking phone? Wow ... just wow. No phone is worth that much money even if it has a few "gee whiz" and "it's neat" type features. Apple has gone way, way off the deep end this time with the price of this behemoth phone. Why would anybody be foolish enough to pay that much for a cell phone? Are people that addicted to blabbing on the phone that they must pay $600 to do so? Sheesh, get a life people. Do you really want to waste your money lining the pockets of Steve Jobs and his minions at Apple? Take the $599 and do something productive with it instead of wasting it on yet another over-hyped, over-priced Apple product.

9. Tiny Storage
Well, just as with the iPod, we can always count on Apple screwing us over with tiny amounts of storage space. The $499 iPhone has 4 gigabytes and the $599 has 8GB. What on earth does Apple expect people to do with that tiny bit of storage space? Think about it. The vaunted iPhone is supposed to be able to play movies as well as play songs. Well, how many movies are you going to be able to store with just 4GB of storage space? And how many songs can you carry? That's to say nothing of your other data that you might need to tote around with you. Apple appears to have rushed headlong into the release of the iPhone with no thought whatsoever about how starved for storage space iPhone users will soon be. What does Jobs think is going to happen? That people will carry around a terabyte external hard disk with them to desperately try to carry their needed data? Come off it, Steve. The minimum data storage for the $499 iPhone should have been 500 GB at the very least, with the top of the line model having at least 800 GB or preferably 1 terabyte.

8. Stylish and Stupid
There's no doubt about it that the iPhone looks "stylish" when you first see it. But isn't that really the problem with all of Apple's products? They look pretty, but provide very low value for the price? Do you really want to be a loser that overpays for the iPhone just to look cool for a little while? Don't forget that no matter how "stylish" you look, sooner or later other people will have an iPhone too, and then you'll just look stupid. Is that what you're really after? To look stupid trying to be cooler than everybody else? Hey, you can do that without spending $600. In fact, you may have already achieved that goal just by reading this column, but I'll leave that to each reader to decide for themselves.

7. Stuck With AT&T
One of the worst things that Apple ever did was to sign a five-year exclusive agreement with AT&T to be the wireless provider for the iPhone. Five years! So if you use Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile or some other provider, you can't get an iPhone unless you switch to AT&T. To date AT&T doesn't seem to have all that great of a reputation as a mobile service provider. I can't speak from experience because I've never used them, but isn't it odd how a fossil from telephone-service days gone by (AT&T) ended up in bed with Apple, a company that likes to pride itself on being "cutting edge"? It's the telecom marriage made in hell! What exactly was Apple thinking here? Did it deliberately decide to screw over customers on other services? We'll never know what on earth was going through Steve Jobs' head when he made this wacky decision (was his turtleneck so tight it cut off the blood supply to his head?) but anybody on a different wireless carrier will have to live with it unless they want to switch to AT&T.

6. Edge and Not 3G
Apple's decision to go with AT&T is also costly for another reason. The iPhone apparently will be using AT&T's super-slow and crappy EDGE data service instead of 3G. Wow. Another major screw-up by Apple. Are you willing to pay for a slow data connection on your "cool" iPhone?Stop and think about that for a minute. You're going to be paying for a data service that might take a few minutes to load this Web page, depending on how it performs that day you use it. Given that the iPhone is supposed to be "cutting edge," I can't imagine what Apple was thinking to release it on a service that doesn't offer 3G data transfer speeds. It's like Apple released a Corvette that can only go up to 35 mph. What the heck is the point?

5. No Flash or Java Support
Flash and Java are both pretty basic parts of the Web experience. And yet Steve Jobs and his lackeys have arbitrarily decided to exclude them from the iPhone Web experience. So much for "the Internet in your pocket" blather that Jobs was spewing earlier on. It's more like the "crippled, crappy, lame version of the Internet in your pocket" instead. No doubt, though, that Apple's marketing department will probably put their usual spin on this and start touting the iPhone as being "Flash-free" or "Java-free" as though both things were positives instead of negatives. And you know what? The Apple Faithful will eat it up! They'll storm out onto the Web and begin filling discussion forums and newsgroups with inane comments about how the iPhone "protects" users from evil things like Flash and Java. I guess when you're the head of a cult, you can make people believe anything.

4. Two-Year Contract and $175 Termination Fee When you buy an iPhone.
You'd better get ready to pay out even more! You'll have to agree to a 2-year contract, whether you like it or not. And what happens if you decide to switch to another wireless provider? Get ready because you'll have to cough up another $175 to regain your freedom from the tyranny of AT&T and Apple. Talk about a ripoff!

3. No Keyboard
I'm sorry but I'm not buying the "multitouch is great" line of thinking. I don't want to be dependent on a stupid touch screen, I want a keyboard! Who knows how accurate the iPhone's touch screen keyboard will be? Early rumors suggest that it might be a disaster in the making. Do you really want to pay $599 or even $499 to find out that it's a total pain in the rear end just to text somebody and that you have no option whatsoever for a built-in keyboard? What was Apple thinking here? No hardware keyboard and a dubious, iffy software based keyboard that could be completely unusable for most people? No thanks! Put a hardware-based keyboard in the next version, Apple, and maybe it will be worth considering.

2. Crapfari Instead of Firefox
One of the most disappointing and shocking things about the iPhone is that it ships with the second-rate (or is it third- or fourth-rate?) browser known as Safari. I prefer to call it Crapfari, as there are just far too many sites that don't work properly with it for me to consider it a real browser. Instead of shipping with a real browser like Firefox, Apple chooses its bastard step-child of a browser. And then it has the temerity, the impudence to release the same bug-ridden piece of junk on Windows right before the launch! Could Apple be more arrogant? How many people are aware of just how bad the Crapfari browser really is and that they will have no alternative on the iPhone? I bet there will be a lot of shocked and angry iPhone users once they start trying to use the Web and find that the Crapfari browser won't display their favorite sites properly. Well, what did they expect from a fourth-rate browser anyway? And here's the No. 1 reason why you shouldn't even consider buying an iPhone:

1. I Got to the Apple Store Ahead of You
If you've read this far, then you've finally discovered the *real* reason I wrote this column. You see, I was out to dissuade as many people as possible from buying an iPhone so that I could have less competition June 29 when I went to get mine. Yep, this entire column was nothing more than a self-serving ruse at giving myself the best chance possible to snag an iPhone on opening day. The fewer people that are interested in the iPhone, the better were my chances at getting one! So in this column I've just regurgitated all the usual FUD about the iPhone, Apple, and AT&T in a blatant attempt to discourage you from being remotely interested in buying one.

What is your opinion?

Perseid meteor shower this summer.

Got a calendar? Circle this date: Sunday, August 12th. Next to the circle write "all night" and "Meteors!" Attach the above to your refrigerator in plain view so you won't miss the 2007 Perseid meteor shower.

"It's going to be a great show," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center. "The Moon is new on August 12th--which means no moonlight, dark skies and plenty of meteors." How many? Cooke estimates one or two Perseids per minute at the shower's peak.

The source of the shower is Comet Swift-Tuttle. Although the comet is nowhere near Earth, the comet's tail does intersect Earth's orbit. We glide through it every year in August. Tiny bits of comet dust hit Earth's atmosphere traveling 132,000 mph. At that speed, even a smidgen of dust makes a vivid streak of light--a meteor--when it disintegrates. Because Swift-Tuttle's meteors fly out of the constellation Perseus, they are called "Perseids."

Note: In the narrative that follows, all times are local. For instance, 9:00 pm means 9:00 pm in your time zone, where you live.

The show begins between 9:00 and 10:00 pm on Sunday, August 12th, when Perseus rises in the northeast. This is the time to look for Perseid Earthgrazers--meteors that approach from the horizon and skim the atmosphere overhead like a stone skipping the surface of a pond.

"Earthgrazers are long, slow and colorful; they are among the most beautiful of meteors," says Cooke. He cautions that an hour of watching may net only a few of these--"at most"--but seeing even one makes the long night worthwhile.

As the night unfolds, Perseus climbs higher and the meteor rate will increase many-fold. "By 2 am on Monday morning, August 13th, dozens of Perseids may be flitting across the sky every hour." The crescendo comes before dawn when rates could exceed a meteor a minute.
For maximum effect, Cooke advises, "get away from city lights." The brightest Perseids can be seen from cities, he allows, but the greater flurry of faint, delicate meteors is visible only from the countryside. Scouts, this is a good time to go camping.

Above: The eastern sky, viewed during the hours before sunrise on Monday, Aug. 13, 2007.
And there's a bonus: Mars. In the constellation Taurus, just below Perseus, Mars shines like a bright red star. Many of the Perseids you see on August 12th and 13th will flit right past it. Instead of following the meteor, you may find you have a hard time taking your eyes off Mars. There's something bewitching about it, maybe the red color or perhaps the fact that it doesn't twinkle like a true star. You stare at Mars and it stares right back.

Earth and Mars are converging for a close encounter in December 2007. NASA is taking advantage by launching a new mission to Mars--the Phoenix Lander. Phoenix will touch down on an arctic plain where it can dig into the ground and investigate layers of soil and ice, searching for, among other things, a habitable zone for primitive microbes. The launch window opens on August 3rd, so by the time the Perseids arrive Phoenix may be hurtling toward the Red Planet. Landing: late Spring 2008.

It's something to think about at four in the morning, with Mars rising in the east, meteors flitting across the sky, and a summer breeze rustling the legs of your pajamas.

Maybe you should go circle your calendar again.

2007 Meteor Showers and Viewing Tips - Thanks to Stardate Online for this chart.

What is your opinion?