The social networking world was turned upside down yesterday when Twitter and Facebook were victims of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack making the service difficult to access yesterday.  This attack is nothing new as many sites have been attacked in this manner.  The buzz around technology related sites this morning is that the attack was really targeting one individual because of his stand on the Georgia versus Russia situation.  With many social networking sites having a connection to Twitter, the attack was far reaching.  There are many places such as Friendfeed, Facebook, blogs and other sites that will pull Twitter posts to their sites.  In fact this very page shows my Twitter posts on the right side of this page.

To clarify what a DDoS attack is and how it works I will try to explain.  A malicious person will find open computers around the world and upload a “bot”, or a program that runs automatically at set times.  This person will upload these bots onto other computers as they find them open.  These bots will ping a site continuously from many different victim computers sort of like what happens when you are access a web site.  These attempts to reach the site are at such a high volume that it takes up all of their bandwidth preventing legitimate users from being able to access the site.  When I say bandwidth, I am referring to a sort of a pipeline and its size.  The larger the size of pipeline, the more data that can be sent through the pipe.  If all the contents of the pipe are being consumed, then nothing else is left for anyone else.

Twitter still rules the social networking world despite what you may hear from other sites.  The reason I say this is because if you actually go to Friendfeed,  you will find that at least 50% of the traffic on there started by a Twitter post.  Of course from there, people will comment on Friendfeed.  The same can be said for Facebook because most of the traffic that I see are originally posted as Twitter.  Most of these sites have their own features that are very useful but again they depend on the traffic that is generated by Twitter.  With each news story that comes out putting down Twitter, they continue to grow.  In fact their growth is exponential with each story that comes out.  This is probably a result of people’s desire to follow the crowd.  In fact just this morning I un-followed 500 people/bots/strangers.  I will admit that I love the ability to get news from Twitter in real time even before it is on the news.  I can find out when a roll over accident is on the freeway before it is even broadcast on television.

So unless someone can come up with a tool that is so easy to use through short messaging system (SMS) they will continue to rule.  With smart phones becoming more prevalent people can update a news story directly from the site.  Instantly millions of people will know within minutes.  In some cases these posts actually result in the media’s attention instead of the other way around.  Having Twitter is empowering to the individual.  As it has been seen recently, there were individuals in Iran that were posting to the world the violence that was going on.  These Twitter posts were fed into many social networking sites and also to the news media.  In fact every major news entity in the United States has a Twitter page.    I know some people that use them just to follow news sites so that when something happens, they get a message to their phones.  It is inevitable that at some point a new technology will come out and unseat Twitter as the major social tool but for now they remain on top.  I will continue to follow these technologies and see new breakthrough tools as they develop.

There is a many reasons that I do not like liberal politics.  Of those reasons is one that really offends me and that is the act of buying votes.  Politicians on the liberal end of the spectrum make a living off of people’s real and perceived hardships.  These liberal politicians like to exploit those “alleged” hardships by campaigning to fix the woes of the world.  Of course the only way in their mind that you can fix the woes of the world is to throw more money at the problem.  These liberal politicians have no intention of actually fixing the problems but rather just want to use them to get elected.  They do this by two different methods and those are actually putting money into something or proposing something that is so outrageous to the opposition that it never gets passed.  Let me elaborate on these tactics.

In some cases these liberal politician will create programs like this “Cash for Clunkers” program and advertise the merits of cleaning up the environment and helping the economy.  This program is just like many others that liberals propose in that it never actually fixes anything.  It throws the public a bone of other people’s money so that ignorant Americans will vote for this politician.  The end result is that the American people are being played to get this character elected using their own money.  This game plays over and over again with liberal politicians.  The actual result of these programs does nothing but cost the tax payers millions of dollars while putting the money into the dealership’s hands.  Anyone knows that $4,500 dollars on the purchase of a new car does not even make a dent in the price of the car especially when the dealership just does what they always do and that is mark up the price of the car to offset the trade in.  Anytime you trade in a car to a dealership you are just “GIVING” them your car.  These dealerships make so much profit on these cars that your trade in is irrelevant in the big scheme of things.

The other method that liberals do that also always works is their policy of proposing new programs that will cost so much money that it will never get past.  They know it will never get past when they propose it but the real purpose in proposing it is to blame the opposition for putting your grandmother out on the street.  They want to blame the opposition for causing homelessness, racism, or any host of world problems.  In a similar way they misrepresent the word “cut” when arguing politics.  Many programs are designed to automatically increase budget spending based on the rate of growth of inflation.  As the economy slows and the price of products decrease, the cost of living decreases in the same way.  When this automatic increase would outgrow the cost of living increase they are supposed to decrease their growth rate.  I cannot remember how many times I have seen liberals crying in Congress claiming the opposition wants to cut programs to the underprivileged. This decrease in the growth rate is portrayed as an actual cut when reported to the media.  The liberals successfully paint their opponents as being insensitive.

These cuts in growth are still growths in spending yet they are portrayed as cuts to “alleged” critical programs.  As I said above, many of these programs never really help anyone but just throw the people a bone to get their votes.  These programs are just a means to give the impression that they are trying to fix things while the ignorant public gets played over and over again.  In any group of people you are going to have a variety of types of people.  Some will naturally prosper, some will live comfortably but not be wealthy while others will struggle.  Within this group of people that are struggling you will also have a variety of reasons they are struggling.  Some will be injured, have doctor bills, some will have been victims of crimes, and some will be un-motivated.  In either case, liberals get power by catering to this group of people and throwing them a bone.  Because many, not all of those in this group are less educated than others, they are unaware of basic math.  If they were aware of the money that was actually being spent on these programs compared to the number of people in this country they would oppose most of these programs.  The reason that I say this is that much of this money if wit were put into a pool and divided equally among every American would end up with every American, man, woman, and child having multiple millions of dollars.

They would have more money in their pockets if this money were just divided equally among the people.  My point in all this is that just as in most government programs, the bulk of the money goes into overhead and into certain groups of people and a small portion actually goes to the “alleged” intended target.  One thing that I failed to mention in this post is the fact that another truth in the world is that some people just cannot manage money responsibly.  If all this money were indeed divided equally among all Americans, there would still be those that would be living in poverty.  In those cased you would have some people that would squander the money away and then STILL expect the government to bail them out.  Let’s keep everything in perspective and remember the government has NO money but rather extorts money from tax payers.  Yes, I correctly used the word extortion because by definition they are forcing money from unwilling participants through threats and intimidation.   If you think I am just making this up, just do not pay your taxes this years and tell me if you get any threats for non payment. 

Anyway, this seemed to be the story of the day on the news and I had to give my take on the program.  This is just another program intended to buy votes and not really help anyone just like this “stimulus” fiasco.  Just another money grab from working people to pay off those that got them elected all the while buying more votes from your tax dollars.  The phrase “business as usual” seems to apply to this program.

The last couple of days I have been removing contacts from my Twitter page because there was a lot of spam.  I went from 675 followers back down to 73.  I think I may have inadvertently deleted a few people that I did not intend on doing.  Since it took me several hours to go through there and remove contacts I deleted some that I did not recognize.  If you are one of the people that I speak to on Twitter and you find yourself removed from my list, please re-follow.  The problem is that when you delete users, you see their login name and not necessarily their actual name.

The reason that I did this was because I have found over time there are robots that are automatically connecting to users and posting spam. Secondly you get followers that search for certain political key words and then follow you.  Sometimes they agree and sometimes they disagree.  In either case, I do not wish to be arguing politics on Twitter. This is particularly irritating and so I usually try to un-follow them fast.  One of the strategies that has worked for me is when I purposely post something that I know will be offensive to certain political groups.  When they begin to lash out at me then I know who to un-follow.  It has been pretty effective so far.

In a given day, I will get 10 or so new followers that I do not even know.  It is clear these followers are not real people but robots because when you look at their profile they are following over 1,000 people and only 20 are following back.  Also they only have less than 100 updates.  Anytime someone has only a fraction of updates compared to how many people they are following, that is a pretty good give away.  There are some people that I genuinely enjoy hearing from on Twitter.

There are certain things that I have learned are just common sense.  There are some things that are just expected that everyone should know instinctively.  The longer I live, the more I learn that some people just never learn things that are considered common sense.  This morning was a shocking reminder of this when a high school friend of my wife’s just showed up at our door at 6:45 AM today, Saturday to visit without even calling first.  Of course we were in bed asleep because we had gone to bed at 2:00 AM. This friend has done similar things before and acts like what she does is completely normal.  One important thing to note is that her friend is deaf.  This should not be a factor except that I think she missed out on some important manners lessons as a kid because she could not hear them.

The first time I ever met her was about a week after I met my wife in 1988.  We were sitting at a Braums restaurant together when this lady walks in and sits down in the chair right next to me and tells my wife to dump me so they could go out and party.  I was willing to go home at the time but my wife chose to stay with me instead.  I was a little surprised that she was so bold and blunt but then I began to think that maybe because she was deaf, her family did not spend the time to teach her manners.  I may be completely wrong about this and maybe she is just the most rude person I have ever met.  I am still hiding in my bedroom at 8:00 AM while she and my wife are in the other room talking to each other. 

It was very clear that we were awaken and still adjusting our eyes when my wife answered the door.  Most people would have noticed that we were clearly still in bed and left but she is still in there.  I have listened in there a couple of times to see if the visit was about an emergency but found they were talking about a cat.  My wife is a very good person and I think the world of her.  Her friend on the other hand is about as stupid as a box of rocks.  I would never even consider showing up at someone’s house at 6:45 AM when every light in the house was turned off.  I certainly would not do it without calling first.  Heck, I would not go to a person’s house at noon without calling first.  You may be interrupting some personal time that is not appropriate to mention on this blog.  Anyway, I thought I would take this opportunity to spend my captive time venting on the blog so I do not lose my cool in front our our unexpected morning guest.

As I type this, I am still in awe that anyone would not know better than to show up unannounced at this hour on a Saturday morning.  Yes, we are normally up at this hour on most days.  In fact we normally get up at 4:00 AM on work days but on Friday’s and Saturday nights we like to stay up and sleep in.  I suspect that we are not the only ones that do this.  Since I live in a bad neighborhood in the first place, it is rare to see anyone go to bed before midnight.  I was just curious if anyone else felt this was rude like I do.  To me this is one of those common sense things that everyone should just automatically know.  I would think that certain manners would be known instinctively, and not necessarily a learned behavior.  Simply “putting ones self in the other person’s position” would be enough to understand certain manners.  Maybe I am too simplistic in my thoughts about common sense.  After all, we are now living in a day where people put warning stickers on appliances to warn against shock.  We must warn people not to touch power lines on our ladders.  Maybe I am living in an dream world where common sense actually exists where in a parallel world people have no such wisdom.

As much as I hate to get myself in debt buying another home, there are some things that just get on my nerves about living here.  The photos below are of my next door neighbor’s backyard.  This is just one of the many examples of what life is like over here.  This house is just one of three that surround me that has dogs barking day and night.  If I go into the backyard for any reason, these dogs start barking and continue for as long as I am out there.

Sorry I had to punish you with it twice but I wanted you to see what I am talking about with a closer shot. 

This tree house was built by the guy that live here before these people.  He built it for his kids that he had temporary custody.  Being a rent house, he was evicted for non payment of his rent.  Then the current group moved in and spray painted this all over this tree house.

You may remember this guy across the street that decided to change the oil in his huge Ryder truck in the drive way and then just hose the oil into the street.  He has three full grown Rottweilers that are always getting out terrorizing the neighborhood when he is away. This same guy plays the stereo all night and you can hear the “boom boom boom” inside my house.  On other occasions I have found that someone had gone through my glove box on my car and left the contents on the ground outside the  car.  Thankfully the stereo is too cheap for anyone to actually try to steal it.  I am getting so tired of dealing with this every day. I am not saying the whole town is this way but rather my neighborhood.  We moved back here from the Air Force when my mother in-law was sick and then my mom became sick.  Now both of them are gone and there is nothing left in this neighborhood to keep us here.  My dad does live a half mile from here but we drive over there anyway.  I am always trying to decide whether I want to get myself in debt by buying another house but when things like this happen, it makes the decision easier.  If I stay in the house and do not go out in the yard, I am fine but that is not realistic.  I just thought I would share what it is like to live in “the hood”. :)

I think most people in this country are very suspicious of politicians in general because of the past indiscretions of those in the past.  This is tragic because as much as we do not trust them, we need them.  There is one thing that seems to be common among politicians that I have noticed is the way that they never commit to ANYTHING.  There answers are always vague, non-committal and even deceptive.  This is not unique to one party or the other.  In fact I have noticed that both Democrats and Republicans are famous for doing this.  To take this a step further, you can look at their use of the word “reform”.  If you look at the definition of the word, you get a clear meaning.

To improve by alteration, correction of error, or removal of defects; put into a better form or condition.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. (2000). Houghton Mifflin Company.

When a politician uses the word, they do a fairly good job of applying it as an active word yet undefined.  The word is usually followed by another term that is usually the political word of the day.  Some examples of this are campaign finance reform, immigration reform, and health care reform.  In each case, the word is used to mean an improvement to these problems/topics.  Where the problem comes in is the how one defines campaign finance, health care, immigration as it relates to being a problem.  To one person, immigration may be seen as a good thing.  This idealistic view that our country was founded on immigrants coming in and making a home.  To another person, immigration may be seen as going too far.  To this person, immigrants are becoming a problem because of their high numbers.  In either case, the same problem is seen from completely different points of view.  To use the word immigration is to be vague and not very descriptive of the problem to begin with.

When a politician comes in with his or her use of reform, they are not addressing the problem at all.  Yes, they do have an agenda and do want to take sides in the issue but they will never state which side they are on.  They will say we need meaningful “immigration reform” while never spelling out which side they are on.  At this point, the ignorant populace just takes it in as this politician wants to fix things.  The politician is never pressed to spell out what immigration reform really means.  They are never pressed to define health care reform or any other topics.  This play on words, or rhetoric is often allowed to go unchallenged.  Whenever you hear a politician use the word reform, hold on to your wallet because more often than not, it is going to cost you.  If it were not going to cost you, then the politician would have no reason to be so deceptive.  Why not come right out and say what they really mean?  To say what they really means would be to take a side.  To take a side, alienates those on the other side and thus, lose their vote. 

If a politician really had any integrity, they would speak how they really feel and if the media had any integrity they would not allow them to get away with this.  People are often quick to forget the last politician that did this so they ignore it when it comes up.  When you hear health care reform on the television, you can rest assured that it is going to cost you.  When they speak of immigration reform, you can be just as assured that it will cost you.  The next time you turn on your television and they are talking “REFORM”, I would suggest you perk up and pay attention.  What ever it is,  you need to call your elected official and go against it.  If it were real reform defined as it was above, they would not be using the word reform at all.  They would spell out specifically what it is that they want to do.  Listen real hard for the word REFORM.

You may remember last week I posted about a storm that came through and caused some damage around my dad’s house along with mine.  This storm caused a lot of hail damage to my car, bent the repeater antenna on my tower and also on my dad’s tower.  I just did not have the time, nor the desire to climb the tower and try to fix the damage.  As I get older, I do not feel comfortable climbing the tower to work on antennas when I do not have a safety harness.  Well my dad is very resourceful and managed to find a tower climber and fixed both antennas yesterday.  It is nice having a dad that use to be in the radio industry for many years.  That is one crisis that is not a problem anymore.  Thankfully the repeaters were not affected in the first place.  both the two meter and the 70 cm repeaters still work fine and it was just the repeaters themselves that were affected.  Disaster is averted! :)

This has been a very eventful week for my family and extended family in a “not so good” way.  I cannot divulge these issues on here because some of it is still going on and I would not want to embarrass any of them.  These family members could really use your prayers if you could give them.  I believe God knows the situation and knows what needs to be done.  There is another situation with another family member that is going on that also needs prayers.  These two people are very important to me and they are under a lot of stress.  Please pray for them if you can.

As I wait for the alarm to come on to wake me up, I figure I will post a few comments about not being able to sleep.  I have had insomnia for a number of years so this is not new.  What is new is getting to sleep and then waking up later like I have been lately.  Usually my insomnia resulted in not being able to get to sleep in the first place.  The problem this time is that I just cannot stop thinking.  My sister is having a major crisis and it is tough to stop thinking about it.  My wife is having a smaller, yet still troubling issue.  My kids are growing too fast and all I can do is think.

I spent the last couple of hours of my sleep time dreaming of the beginning of my Air Force career back at Davis-Monthan AFB.  I have been thinking about it in the current form since I just went to Tucson about a month ago.  Anyway, there are so many things going on that my mind is just racing.  I have been doing everything except giving it over to God.  Recently we have been so busy that we have virtually stopped reading the Bible and not thanking him for all that he has done.  I would just like to take a moment and tell the world what a great family I have and give God the credit that he deserves.  Sometimes we get so busy that we forget to acknowledge those that have helped us get where we are today.

My wife Sunday has been instrumental in helping me go through the Air Force, finish college, and raise two sons.  She has traveled the world with me and never complained.  What a great woman she is and I am so grateful to have her.  My oldest son has decided to get a place of his own and that really was hard for me to take at first but at the same time I am very proud of him.  My youngest son is still home in theory but he is growing so fast that he is hardly home either.  I do not blame him because I was the same way when I was his age.

I am thankful that I still have my dad around.  He has been a great friend to me and has done wonders for me.  I really do miss my mom though.  I lost her in 2005 to a heart attack and it seems that I have never had the chance to mourn her loss.  I miss you mom!  Well now that I have rambled on, the alarm is just about to come on.  It is really tough to sleep when you are thinking about 100 things.  I am grateful that I have so many things to think about.   I better get off here and get ready for work.  I have almost forgiven Gmail :).  Yesterday I was having problems with it and you can read about it here.  I will try to post more often on here in the future.

A while back I finally succumbed to the peer pressure and started using Gmail as my email interface.  I allowed everyone to convince me of the virtues of dealing with Google since they are only second to Barack Obama, and Apple in their deity (sarcasm).  One of the reasons I allowed people to convince me to move to Gmail was because at the time I was considering the purchase of a T-Mobile G1 phone.  This phone was suppose to integrate all of its address book over to Gmail since the G1’s operating system was from Google. Over time I grew to enjoy the ability to archive emails and making them searchable later.  This cool feature is no longer necessary because both Yahoo Mail and Windows Live (Hotmail) now give you either unlimited, or ever growing storage just like Gmail.  All you have to do is create a sub-folder and drag everything over to the new folder.  You can search through the email just like you can on Gmail.

Recently I have been noticing a pattern with Gmail freezing up the browser when I try to send a message.  Also Gmail makes it difficult to copy and paste from one of its messages.  I know… I know…  Many of you are saying that my problem is that I am using Internet Explorer.  Many of you are saying that my problems will go away if I just use Firefox or Chrome browser.  Those browsers have their benefits no doubt but they also have their issues.  For example, Firefox does not automatically install the Windows Media plug-in making it difficult to listen to streaming audio that uses Windows Media.  Before you start to preach to me about how Microsoft is evil and that you should not use Windows, I will tell you right now, I like Windows and would never use a Mac until their prices become competitive.  Secondly some audio streams are meant for Windows Media and require the player to play.  Thirdly I really like Windows Media Player and find it is my favorite player.

I do like some of Google’s toys they have but their email is weak in my opinion.  One thing that I hate about Gmail is that they do not have margins set on their sides.  If you type 200 characters on one line, it does not automatically wrap to the next line at 80 like normal people view them.  It makes it difficult to format your email in a certain way because the page is way too wide and not natural as to the way it will be viewed on the other end. 

I did like the way Yahoo was for a long time but they too have gone the way of the teenage girls advertising dating services.  Also they do not allow POP mail.  So I guess it will be Windows Live (Hotmail) that I will be going to.  I do have my own domain and they allow me to retrieve my mail through “HTTP” in Outlook and also through the web.  Since they have allowed “ever growing” storage, I think they are the one for me at this time.  Also I love the Skydrive allowing you to store 25 GB on their server.  If I have this all wrong, please tell me.  I think all three services are good in their own way so the values and weaknesses are completely subjective.  I used Yahoo since 1996 until just a few months ago and may go back if Windows Live does not work out.

Gmail, it has been a fun couple of months but I think I will try something else for now.

I have made it clear over time of my love for storms.  Maybe I am weird but I just find the storms enjoyable.  On Thursday July 16, 2009 we had a surprise storm that I found to be a dream come true.  This storm was sudden and small in size thought it caused some damage in the area it covered.  The storm covered most of the Eastern half of the Oklahoma City metro area while the Western half of the city remained sunny and hot.  Although this storm was very exciting and wild, I too was a victim of the damage from this storm.  Most of my damage was an after effect of the storm.  In the photo above you can see the main entrance to Heritage Park Mall in Midwest City, Oklahoma.  As you can see the roof was blown off onto the front wall.  This was just one example of the many buildings that lost roofs as a result of the + or – 80 MPH wind that resulted from this storm.  In the photo below you can see some of the 2 inch hail that we received at our home.

In this picture below you can see one of our repeaters (145.25) antennas bent over from the high winds.  This antenna is a very expensive $900 antenna that is 20 feet long and the pole is more than two inches in diameter.  This antenna still works but is very unattractive to look at.

Just as the antenna above is bent, you can see our other repeater (443.3) antenna that is on our WIN System repeater.  This antenna is just as expensive as the one above.  The wind was very powerful to be able to do this on both towers more than a half mile apart.

There were other damages that were not pictured here such as our car.   One of our cars took many dents because of the hail.  In addition to these there were after the fact damages done because of the power surges after the storm.  This storm knocked down many power poles in my area leaving thousands of people without electricity.  We were one of the fortunate ones that did not lose power long term but rather lost power intermittently over a two day period.  At least I thought we were fortunate.  As the local power company repaired many of the power lines that were destroyed, it resulted in a drain of the rest of the electrical system.  With each pole that was restored, we received a one or two second blink of our lights.  This went on for two days resulting in damage to several of our household appliances.  In the picture below you can see my $200.00 Internet radio that was ruined.  This radio will not even light up now.  In addition to this we lost a computer, a Nintendo Wii that was less than one week old.

The brand new computer that replaced the bad one has now developed an intermittent outage that I cannot duplicate.  The appliance damage is exacerbated by the fact that I live in an old home where there is not an adequate grounding system in the electrical wiring.  The typical surge protector that most people use to protect their appliances are rendered useless in these cases.  They cannot protect from surges because they need an adequate ground to shunt the excessive voltages to.  Without giving the surge protector a good ground to send the excessive voltage to, it leaves those appliances vulnerable.  In fact I have every one of these appliances plugged into these surge protectors.  There may be other problems that I have not found yet.  There were many trees that were split in half all over my neighborhood leaving the streets filled with leaves and tree branches.

This damage leaves me a little conflicted on the storm that was so enjoyable at the time.  This was a wakeup call that shows that we can be a victim during and after the storm.  Although the storm was over two days ago, I continue to get blinking lights due to the power company reinserting those downed lines back into the system.  If you live in an older home that does not have adequate grounding, you will be vulnerable to power surges even if you have surge protectors installed.  It looks as though I have a lot of work to do to get this place up to standards.  Surprisingly it was not the lightning that caused these damages.  It was after the storm when all these surges happened that has resulted in the damages to my appliances.  This makes it even worse because even if you were responsible and unplugged your appliances when you saw the storm coming, you would have plugged them back in after the storm.  There would ordinarily be no reason to unplug my appliances with the current sunny skies yet these ongoing power surges allow continue to damage my equipment on this sunny day.

If you are like me and have a lot of electronic equipment, you may want to do some research and find out what constitutes true surge protection.  You may find out that you have no protection at all like myself.  I hope this post helps to alert you to the risks that are inherent with electronic equipment.  If you have this equipment, you may want to take some action to protect yourself.

I guess it is that time again.  The photo above shows the temperature as 109 degrees while the National Weather Service only listed the high as 105.  Oklahoma gets a little of both cold and hot.  This is fairly common temperatures to get in summer though it only happens about two weeks each year.  The average high on the hottest day of the year is 94 degrees though we have periods of much warmer like this.  Just thought I would share this.

This morning I ran across a post on Friendfeed that proclaimed how Friendfeed was so much better than blogging.  He posted how he has thousands of followers on there and how it was real time for people to interact with the posts.  To my surprise, most of his respondents were in agreement with me in that blogging was better than social networking.  My stated reason was that a blog has a permanent address so that people can find you.  I use Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook among others just like thousands of others.  The problem with all of them is that they are vying for your time and attention.  They are all competing against each other in an attempt to unseat the other one as being the number one network.  Each time another network comes out, people go sign up for them and some stay and some keep their old network.  Many like myself keep all of them but have to divide my time among them.  Twitter wins out almost every time because I can post quickly from my phone and it automatically updates the others.

My blog keeps the same address and is not subject to the popularity of a particular social network.  Since these networks come and go within a two year period it would be easy to lose contact with some people.  If you do not actively use these networks then you could lose contact with those friends since the popularity of that network could dwindle and its followers would move on to another network.  For those that prefer to use these social networks as their primary interaction with friends, I would suggest you also maintain a domain hosted web site.  This can be a blog or just a static site where you have a permanent address where people can find you.  These addresses are indexed by search engines making them easier to find.  This way as the Facebook of the day give way to the newest social network, people will still be able to find you.

Also one of the benefits of having a blog over a real time social network is that you control the content and the duration of the post.  If you use a social networking site, the content is only visible as long as no one else is posting.  As new items are posted, these posts are moved down on the page giving way for new content.  Eventually your post is moved completely off the page.  In addition to this, there is another benefit to a blog over the social networking site.  Most social sites have limitations to how many characters you can post in a single post.  Like Twitter will only allow you to post 140 characters at one time.  These limitations vary depending on which site you go to but there are limitations.

Another problem with these social networking sites is that there seems to be a erroneous cultural attitude that email is obsolete and going away.  This idea is not very well thought out because email will never go away unless a newer “mail” technology comes into play.  This is because many or maybe I should say most employers require all communications to be made using the company email system.  At my work for example, they block access to all social networking sites and web based email systems.  If you would like to communicate with someone outside the organization, you must use the employer’s email system that is subject to monitoring.  You cannot control the content of a social networking site and therefore not allowed.  For this reason, many of those on social networking sites refuse to check their email.  To them it is an antiquated system that is not worth using.  They fail to realize that every one of these social networking sites requires an email address to confirm their identity.  Email is not going away.  These people discard their email and so you cannot leave them a forwarding address if you move.  By keeping a permanent web site that is available for search engines, you can still be found after several years.  These are just a few of the reasons why blogging is better than social networking. 

If you have not spoken to someone for five years, they can always go to their favorite search engine and search for you.  Your blog or permanent domain will be found in the search engine results while many of the social networking sites may not be.  You may not like to blog but having a permanent web address can be used to point your friends and family to your social networking site that you prefer to use.  I too enjoy using many of these sites and in fact use Twitter every day.  By having my permanent domain, people can find my Twitter page without having to search around all day.  I hope I have been able to explain a few things here so that you will understand why I maintain this blog even though I do not have time to get on it as much as I like.  On a social network, I would not have been able to post my information in such detail.  This makes it easier to fully explain my point.

It is not that often that a person can get it so wrong that it brings fear to them.  Just 30 minutes ago I was complaining about the rain always missing us. This evening was shaping up to be another one of those evenings where there is a line of thunderstorms that goes completely across the state and then forms a hole just as it passes the metro area.  As much as I love storms I find myself getting mad when this happens.  Well I guess I insulted God, or angered him in some way because shortly after that, we had a downpour.  I would estimate that the wind was blowing nearly 80 MPH in the above photo.  You can even see a leaf blowing by in this shot.

In this picture you can see how the street was flooded near my home.  This is the rain that we never get.  I would say the water was about four inches deep in the center of the road here.

In the picture above you can see the tree branch laying in the road with the hail splashing in the flooded street.  The storm was almost over at this point and you can see the elementary school in the background is showing signs of the sun coming out.

This is the beautiful sky as the storm is moving away.  The large bird circles over head asking himself “What was that?”  I really enjoyed this storm and wanted to share it with the rest of you.  That wind did get a little scary at one point.  I missed some great shots because I was trying to keep the camera dry.  At one point the wind was blowing so hard and the rain was coming down so hard that I could barely see across the street.  I do not want to be known as the one that always complains when things are going bad and never give God credit when things are going well.  We really needed this rain and it was a real blessing.  I am very thankful to be able to get rain especially when two hours earlier it was 97 degrees.  If you want to see the rest of the pictures, just click on any one of them and it will take you to Flickr to see the whole set.  Thanks for stopping by.

I long ago noticed a trend that happens more often than you may think. I have noticed that many times we will have a line of storms that go from Kansas to Texas, or Texas to Arkansas and the storm will somehow miss us.  How does this happen?  The storm will be a non stop line all the way across the state and yet just before it arrives in the Oklahoma City area and a hole will appear so that it completely misses us.  Once it passes, it will rejoin and it once again goes all the way across the state. Someone like myself that loves stormy weather notices these types of things.

I think I will start saving screen shots of radar views any time I catch this happening.  I know it sounds like a non issue but it is amazing how often this happens.

Tonight a storm went by here and barely brushed by us to the East.  We did manage to get enough light rain while the sun shine over head.  The one good thing that did come from this was this pretty rainbow to the East.  I will take whatever rain we can get but we really need some more.  The rainbow was a real blessing to look at it.  Also it cooled the temperature from 97 degrees to about 85 in just a half hour.  I just wanted to share this image.

June 25th 2009 was meant to be an exciting day with the first ever NBA draft for the Oklahoma City Thunder. With the Thunder getting the third draft pick it was sure to be a great day.  It was a Thursday that was going to be a Friday for me because I was taking off work on Friday.  What a sad day yesterday with the loss of two famous people in our country yesterday and three in the last week.  Those who have read this blog know that I am anything but a celebrity worshiper.  In fact, I often chastise others that do engage in celebrity worship.  With that said, I have to admit that Michael Jackson was a huge part of my teenage years.  When his Thriller album came out, I was in 10th grade and I will never forget the impact he had on my teenage years.  For the tough guys that I tried to emulate, it was not cool to listen to his music though we were all closet Michael Jackson fans. I remember no one would admit to listening to his music yet he sold more albums than anyone in history.  Someone was buying them.  I remember listening to his music and then when my friends would come over I would quickly switch the radio back over to the classic rock station so my friends would think I was cool.  Looking back I would never choose that life style again where I could not be myself.  For that reason to this day I cannot stand classic rock music.  I sometimes forget with my own kids the pressure that people put on you as a teenager.  The pressure they put on themselves to fit into the group.

Though he made some mistakes, I cannot deny his impact on my own life.  In fact here I am at 43 years old and I have more than 20 mp3’s of his songs on this very computer I am typing on.  He made some terrible choices that I would hope that he regretted afterward.  I know I have made some huge mistakes in my own life that I would change if I could do them again.

Farrah Fawcett was a part of my younger years with her role in Charlie’s Angels. Later she was in several movies including the Burning Bed.  That movie was a wake up call to anyone that considered being a spouse abuser for sure.  I remember all my friends had that famous bathing suit poster on their walls.  I never had one myself because my parents would not allow that at the time.  I often wondered what makes people act so crazy with celebrities and I still do.  In this case however, I lose any sense of rationale.  No one can deny that Michael Jackson was unusual and in some cases lacked some common sense.  Nevertheless his existence brought back my teenage years.  When I say he lacked some common sense, I refer to his continued exposure to children even after being accused of child molestation.  Most people would take that first accusation as a lesson to not put themselves in that situation again.

In all fairness, if this had been anyone else I would be less likely to give him a second chance in the same situation.  That double standard goes back to the nostalgia that he brought back to me.  This amazing news was just hours after hearing of the death of Farrah Fawcett and just two days after Ed McMahon.  Farrah’s fight with cancer was such an opportunity to shine the light on this disease to get people involved in finding a cure.  This opportunity was cut short with the loss of Michael Jackson, ironically by a heart attack.  Both heart trouble and cancer are the two largest causes of death in the United States.  I know it sounds like I am speaking in a way that Michael Jackson’s death was unfair to Farrah.  It may seem that way because I do have an emotional connection to both of these diseases.

I lost my mom in 2005 to a heart attack and my mother in-law in 2002 to cancer.  My mom had a serious heart attack when she was only 29 years old.  This attack caused permanent damage to her heart and she suffered many heart attacks over the next 30 years.  My incredibly supportive dad stood by her side stressing out for years.  He was so stressed at times that he looked terrible.  I really loved my mom and miss her so much.  It has never been the same since she has been gone.  My mother in-law had many illnesses over the years and one day we found out that she had cancer.  By then it was too late to do anything.  My mother in-law was a very good person and my wife is just like her.  Ever since then my wife has been actively involved in the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life.  This helps her feel like she is doing something for her mom because she never had time with her own mom.

This blog post may seem a little down but a death always brings this out in me.  Michael Jackson was so big during my most influential years that it is difficult to believe that it is true.  With such a big event, this will certainly go down as one of the biggest events that I will always remember…even bigger than Elvis Presley’s death.  When these things happen it really makes me begin to think and put things into perspective.  It makes me think about our purpose on this earth.  Did we just simply land here by accident'?  Was there an explosion one day and living creatures just evolved from no where?  Is there purpose?  It can make a person begin to think of their value in this world. 

In my case it makes me thankful for what I have.  I have Jesus who died for my sins so that I would have a chance to be forgiven for my mistakes, and bad choices.  I for one believe we are not an accident and someone put us here for a reason.  This person is God.  Anyone that is honest with themselves and looks the creation of this world would have to admit that it is so well designed that it had to be done on purpose.  Just look at a tree leaf and see the awesomeness of HIS creation.  God is almighty and deserves a glory greater than all of man could give him.  He is honest, just, powerful, forgiving, loving, and fair.  I think he deserves our true worship.  With all the emotional feelings that a singer can give us, it cannot compare to the glory that God deserves.

I truly wish the best for Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Ed McMahon and hope they were blessed enough to know that Jesus died for them and they had purpose.  I have watched countless interviews over the last 24 hours about how Michael Jackson as much money and fame as he had still desired purpose.  God loved him and that is the greatest purpose a person can have.  If he could have ever realized this, deep down it would give him a sense of value that a trillion dollars could not compare.  As bad as we all were at following the guidance that God has given us, he loved us enough to come to us in the form of a man to die in our place.  If that ever gets into your spirit, it will bring tears to your eyes that anyone could really care for you that much.  I feel blessed to have been able to know this revelation.  I feel blessed to have such a wonderful wife for the last 20 years.  God also blessed me with two incredible sons that I would never trade for anything on this earth.

It is interesting how a death can make you think about things that we actively try to avoid thinking about.  I have never met any of these celebrities but their loss made me think about what is important.  I hope I am not the only one that feels this way.  I know I am not because I scrolled across the radio this morning and I heard many stations that spoke of the death of Michael Jackson as an event they will never forget.  I heard those on the local sports station saying the same thing and they are famous for belittling celebrities all the time.  I have heard them make fun of him many times though this morning I heard the same people discussing this event seriously as a moment they will never forget.  In the end, this in my opinion is a good thing because death is something we all will face some day and many do not wish to think about it or their purpose.  Events like this make people think of them and can make people think about what is really important in their lives.

Today I took off work so I could go to the doctor to get the results of a heart echo that I had last week.  I often have these anxiety attacks where my heart starts racing and I feel short of breath.  Since I lost my mom from a heart attack, I often worry about them.  After talking to many of my family members I find that I am not the only one that has them.  It is scary when they happen and it makes me feel like I am not able to breath.  I found out later that the accelerated breathing makes it worse.  My results came back this morning and my doctor said that it looked normal.

Well now that I have pretty much “bummed out” everyone with my blog post I guess I will get on with a great weekend.  Remember to recognize what you have and be thankful for them.  It is too easy to focus on the bad things and miss out on the great things and people you have around you.

This week has been very busy with having to work overtime the last two weekends in a row and working two hours overtime each day.  Some point this week, my HF antenna fell from the tower and landed on my next door neighbor’s power line.  Both the antenna and her power line were insulated so it was not a big deal for it to lay there a couple days because I just have not had time to work on it.  As you can see below, it is the antenna on the top and to the left.  It is an Alpha Delta DX-LB Plus 6 through 80 meter dipole antenna that was quite expensive.

What happened was that I had the antenna suspended on a pole off the side of the tower at 50 feet by a pulley and a nylon rope.  Some time this week, the rope broke sending the antenna to the power line below.  Well I hoped the neighbor would not notice it until I would have time to fix it but she did.  The night before last she came to the door about 8:00 pm and told us how concerned she was.  Of course I had already showered for bed because I had to be up at 4:00 am.  Well the next morning I got up and I was on that tower about 40 feet up at 5:00 am trying to pull the antenna off the wire.  Because the antenna has large traps on it, the antenna did not want to cooperate.  I eventually got it down but not after getting every dog in the neighborhood wound up.  Man I have the most stupid dogs that live next door to me on three sides.  These dogs will bark non stop for hours on end.  If I did not sleep with a fan next to my head, I would never get any sleep.

For the life of me I cannot see what the attraction is to a loud barking dog.  They have all the appeal of a wasp in attack mode.  Oh well, I did manage to get the antenna down without destroying it though it is all tangled up.  I hope to be able to work on it within the next few weeks and get it back up.  I really am not up to climbing the tower any time soon because my feet have been hurting a lot lately.  So this means that I will not be on the radio in the near future.  Do you hear that lady next door?  When your television is not working right, it is not me.  Just kidding.  She is okay but she does think it is me sometimes when it is not.  That is part of the way of life when you are a ham rado operator.  People will see your antenna and just assume that it is you that is messing up their television.  I have been watching TV and not even have the radio turned on and people come to the front door and accuse me of coming in on their television.  It just comes with the territory as my dad can attest to.  He has had similar experiences at his house with false accusations

For the most part, things have been going fine around here except for all the overtime.  Some people love working overtime but not me.  I believe that time is the only resource that you cannot get more of.  You can work and get more money but you cannot get more time.  Fortunately my overtime is limited in scope and I work with some great people.  I am looking forward to not working next weekend.  Well I think that just about covers my week.  I thought I should post an update since I have not posted much lately.  I will try to keep this up to date more so you will know how things are going.

We went on our vacation a couple weeks ago and had a great time despite being dominated by a poison ivy breakout from an unmentionable place.  Among the many things we did while on vacation, we went back to one of our Air Force homes at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona.  What can I say?  I loved that place so much but was only able to stay there for 16 months before being moved to RAF Bentwaters in England.  Davis-Monthan AFB is a great base to be stationed as they are a training base for A-10 pilots.  I was a weapons systems mechanic when I was there.  I worked on MAU-40/MAU-50 bomb racks, triple ejector racks (TERS), and LAU-117, LAU-88 missile launchers, and AIM-9 launchers.  Lets not forget the massive powerful GAU-8/A Avenger Cannon, gatling gun.

This gun system is an amazing piece of machinery that I have torn down to the smallest piece and put back together again.  This gun system is an ugly monster though when it jams up and I have been involved in a number of them as well.  Although I worked on the A-10 at three different bases (Davis-Monthan, RAF Bentwaters, and Eielson AFB), it was Davis-Monthan where I got my start.  People affectionately refer to this great base as DM.  Amazingly I still have a remote connection to this base even today as I continue to work in a system program office (SPO) for a different weapons system that occasionally requires parts to be pulled from the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) at Davis-Monthan AFB.

My wife and I have some wonderful memories of this base and my oldest son was born here just prior to the start of the Gulf War.  Of course we had to make a point to come out to the base and take some pictures.  The above A-10 is one of the planes that was there when I was there.  We did not have a lot of time to stay because we had to be somewhere that evening but it was a great time.  The weather was cooler than normal and only hit 93 degrees one time during our entire vacation.  This is almost unheard of for Southern Arizona this time of year.  During our combined trip we took 722 pictures and during our Tucson portion I took 266 photos.  Although most of the pictures are uploaded onto the Flickr site, some 60+ did not make it on their server and I am not sure which ones that did not make it.  All of them did however make it onto my Windows Live site located here.  It is very time consuming to go through more than 700 pictures to verify all the photos especially when many of them are very similar.  I hope you enjoy the vacation photos as much as I did taking them.  Again, I had a bad poison ivy break out as you can see in some of the photos.  It was still a good time despite that.