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 I wrote an article several months ago about this year’s fire season.  I thought I would give an update:

• We are now at National Preparedness Level 5 (of 5)
• 1.1 million acres are currently on fire. 
• 5.0 million acres have burned so far this year. This is 92% of the record-setting 2006 fire season.

In case you are interested in more info, go here. 

An Open Letter to My Fellow Citizens of Neverwinter:

All,

I have to tell you something.  No, no… hold on right there.  It’s my turn to speak, for Chris’sake.

I hate you all.  Oh, don’t have the nerve to look surprised.  I have been holding my tongue for a while now and you all know it.

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Hunter’s Stock Picks portfolio is down over 15%!!  This is the worst I have ever seen it.  Over the same period the DOW has stayed even.  Time to cut some losses, little dude…

Hey!  The Prize Pool for the Puzzle for Charity is $50.00 now.  Hint #2  has been posted, even!  The link is on the right.  Good Luck!

Ok… I transferred all the video from our trip to New York to the hard drive and I am now in the process of editing it.

While we were in Western New York we went to a Flea Market (which will remain nameless for a number of reasons) I remember being “fun to go to” when I was a kid.  It has since turned into Mos Eisley Spaceport- “Never will you find a more retched hive of scum and villainy.”  Or maybe the years have just thrown my memory out of whack…

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We’re back from a trip to Western New York.  Good food, good family, good weather… Can’t beat it, really.  Took several hours of video - about 10 minutes of which is gold.   Transferring the video to the hard drive now.  You gotta see some of the knock-off “brand names” we found at a flea market in Buffalo.  Will post soon.

Updated the Puzzle for Charity prize : $49.50.  Look for a hint in the near future!

Driving through the Morse-code-like construction zone (slow, fast, fast, slow, slow, fast…) that is formally known as “Pennsylvania” is sort of like being forced to play an hours-long game of Simon Says with the PA Department of Transportation.  “PDOT Says: Turn on Headlights.” “PDOT Says: Drive 45.” “OK, you can go 65…  ah ah ah!  PDOT didn’t saaay!  Here’s a $250 speeding ticket for ya, English.”

I am going on vacation for a few days.  Here’s some stuff:

• The Puzzle for Charity prize is up to $47.50 (and the quilt).  Only one guess so far.
• I will update the Prize Pool to its correct value when I get back (or up it to the right value should someone answer correctly)
• I will not be able to answer e-mails until Sunday or Monday.  Just be patient, please.
• 2 more OFNOGS sighted today at the gym.  One carefully folding one of his 4 towels and the other watching the TV.  (They really need to get rid of that TV.)  The counter has been updated.
• I added news icons to the sidebar.  These were recovered from another site.  Hover over the buttons for a short definition.
• The first red tomatoes were picked from the garden today.
• If you ever see someone driving the same make, model, year, and color vehicle as the one you are driving, always look inside.  You might be a time traveller and not know it (yet).

See you later!

…And I heard him exclaim, as he sank out of sight,

“Nice work, everyone!  You broke the planet, all right!”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6899612.stm

Ok.  I have already mentioned I am not an Early Adopter.  New techs come out and it is pretty rare that I need to be among the first to have them.  Oh, don’t get me wrong… I love toys.  But I refuse to spend a lot of my money on stuff that will drop to half price if I just wait a year.  But to me, it’s sort of like begging a large company “Please please please grant me permission to own something you make… I’ll skip out on work for days and pay anything”.

It also allows time for me to be at the right part of the bathtub curve when I do buy stuff so I rarely have to deal with surprise battery replacement issues, red-rings-of-death, plasma screen burn-in, the VHS-Betamax-like war of HD formats, and other buyer’s-remorse-related issues.  Call me un-American.

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• Bought a video camera today (my first one, btw).  I will be posting test films from time to time.   
• Last info about the Japanese beetle traps: After a good rain, they turn into Satan’s tea-bag.  Steeped in their own juices… what a way to go.  I got rid of the traps this morning.
• I added a couple of RSS feeds to the sidebars here.  One for world news, one for This Day in History.

Hey!  New Poll!  It’s on the right! 

Two more OFNOGs were spotted at the gym today.  One was grinning happily to himself watching TV and toweling off his feet.  The other decided that the intersection of two aisles of lockers was a good place to stand and stare off into the middle distance. The counter on the right has been updated.

What’s an OFNOG?  Click here.

Blog is slow today for some reason.

Puzzle for Chartity is now worth $46.00.  Link is on the right.

Here are some fun facts!

I was wondering how many Japanese beetles I catch with the traps I bought and I wasn’t about to empty out the bag and count them.  I know that each time I change out the bag it weighs about 1/4 of a pound.  Given the weight of an average Japanese beetle this comes out to over 1300 beetles in each trap!

I was thinking “Oh, come on… there is no way!  The bag isn’t all that big, and it’s only been a couple of days since I changed it out last.”  But, assuming a beetle is occupies 1cm x 0.5cm x 0.5cm, it turns out this many bugs would easily fit inside the volume of a Rubik’s Cube.

So I guess that number is right after all.

Gross.

Well, Hunter has had a terrible week.  His portfolio is 6.8% down since we started this.  Some of that is due to the weird way the after hours trading went the first day, but most of it was just bad luck.

You can check out his portfoilio at the Hunter’s Stock Picks  page.  The link is on the right.

Happy Meaningless Milestone Day!  To celebrate, I held an iPhone in my hands at the AT&T store.  Pretty sweet.  And a lot thinner and smaller than it looks on TV.

More formatting done today… (Projects, Puzzle Rules, and Puzzle Archives pages). Can’t wait for this part of updating the site to be over.