My friend isn’t alowed to come up the stairs so here he waits every morning for me to come down. He’s always so eager and happy / glad to see me. I reward him with a first light 3 mile jog through the park woods.

For anyone who ‘needs to get out more’, a beast like this one will remind you when it’s time — rain or shine. He likes long walks in the fresh air twice a day. He and I have covered a few miles together.

Cheers! hound dawg!

Architectural control standards imposed today by various homeowners associations include: no RVs or boats in the yard, no derelict cars and, in the case of these unhappy looking innocents, 3 dogs maximum. Looks like they posed with their smallest and sweetest. The news article goes on to report, that the other 6 are inside the house! We can only imagine the ruckus. The sympathy picture was a good effort. The other ones are probably barking and yelping like mad 😉 The sound is turned down.

Well one more day until we go to The Windy City (Chicago). I’m afriad this is my last blog until I get back on thursday if there is not a computer open. Our flight to Chicago is at 7:00 PM so it’s going to be a long day to wait on monday.

Check out my game sectoin on the left. On space invaders it’s not your computer, it’s just really slow.

I’ve got this idea and it should help the airline companies bottom line.

We’ll call it MY_photo-op. The carrier would install a camera mounted in the fuselage that will take aerial pictures enroute. (ever tried to snap a shot through those scratched and distorted passenger windows?) The airborne cam would provide clear hi-res images of points of interest, geography, cool cloud formations, takeoffs and landings…

Those flite phones in the seat back that I’ve never seen anybody use? Yank those out. Or rather, change the handset interface to mimic that of a PDA. The credit card swipe can stay. Now allow the customer to choose his time and location for his shot. He could pick right | left | down camera angles. The images can be emailed realtime.

Charge 5 bucks.

Sorry there’s been a shortage of blogs. I will now have them up on most days. Well let me bring you back into the world. Here’s what happened last week:

It most have been atleast the last tuesday when the Stanley Cup came to the Cary Towne Center. Of course i couldn’t give up the option of standing in line for 40 minutes to get my picture taken with it. And I even got to touch it. I figure that it was as close to North Carolina then it will ever be because The Hurricanes don’t have a chance of winning against Detriot or Colorado.

The Hurricanes game was on monday at 7:00. My neighbor’s dad took all of the boys to what he thought would be a showing of the game on the big jumbo plex screen at the ESA since it was in Canada. So we go to the ESA only to wait in a big line of cars. This would have normal for a game but just a showing of the game? And there was no one with Canes shirts or Canes flags.
We thought it was free until we saw tickets in other peoples hands. We went over to the guy at the ticket both and asked him “Does this thing cost any money and do we need tickets?”. They guy looks at us like we’re crazy. We later found out that the game was actualy at the Ritz not the ESA. We still wondered what was so big that happened there. Three words “Stars On Ice” . We all still wanted to watch the game some where other than just at home so we got in the car and ended up watching the game in the Back 9 Pub. The whole place smelled like smoke. It was odd having one adult, five teenage boys, and two girls from the first grade and Kindergarten. The two girls were my friends little sisters that tagged along. so we grabbed some pepsi’s and sat and watched most of the game. We got home and I was smelling realy bad from the smoke. I was afriad that my mom would think the wrong thing since she thought we were going to the ESA.

Well thats about the highlights of what I have not wrote in the past week. I just got out of school for the summer. My family are planning to go to Chicago on Monday so don’t expect to see anything in those three days. I’ll have them up after i get back. I’m also going to visit my family in Phoenix. I’m sure I can get on a computer there.

What’s wrong with this picture? (forgive the replay of the I40 bridge tragedy) The lone Dodge PU looks like the “lucky” one alright… but observe the crushed front end damage. My take is that there was a vehicle that preceded this one and either by good fortune or skillful driving was able to stop at the edge of the abyss and just in time. Only to be bumped and sent over the brink by this dufus. Hey! Thanks alot!

I watched a travel-culture show on PBS last night. The location: Korea’s countryside. I was intrigued with the unusual splendor when it dawned on me that I’d not seen these kind of images before (save for a B/W text book “war/conflict” photo still). This video offered exotic and foreign views of a land and people. Those portrayed lived rurally as simple farmers, hunter/gatherers, and villagers with their lives utterly dominated by food procurement ,its ritualized preparation and the consumption thereof. It was amazing watching the life style culinary habits of these people, The rice,soy beans, veggies and mushrooms — Yumeee. The dried fish, centipede dust or dried frog jerky? Pass! The silkworm larvae were billed as a favorite treat for the youngsters. The program host tried a market sample and understated that it was the most distasteful flavor ever. BTW, I’m not poking fun at these people (the meat; sure). Just the opposite. I admire them for their cultural discipline, ecological and environmental harmony. For anyone considering a diet or weightloss program, just get thee to this place. I can guarantee you’ll be thin as a rail.

When I was eatin’ ’em you couldn’t get the free ClubDbllTreeChocolateChips to save your life. The front desk offered up every excuse why they were always out. Check with us in the AM. (and of course they’d give you the confused look when you did, saying that they are not out until after 2pm – well past checkout) Sometimes I would think about changing into my anonymous clothes and sneak back to the front desk just to see if the other customers were getting them.

Well, at tonight’s sign-in they were feeling guilty or sorry or something and they gave us extras. I gave mine to my crew 🙁 That hurt. I picked a fine time to quit cookies.

The Air China 747 crashed into the sea last week got scant attention. Third world airline. Third world people, with 200 sum/odd lost. The I40 bridge collapse by contrast and with a dozen or so cars and trucks that fell, gets the focus. Is that because there are better pictures? Is that because you and I have traveled that route and crossed that very same bridge? Is that because American lives are more valuable than those of the Third world?

The newspaper reports that the victims were found trapped in their vehicles. I don’t like the description trapped. They weren’t anymore able to ‘swim out of the wreckage then those unfortunates in the airliner. Seat belted in perhaps but not trapped. They were all killed by the impact.

It’s would seem a win/win but it rings hollow. The Bush/Putin document is only three(3) pages in length. Sounds more like a memorandum of understanding, an agreement to agree. Work out the nasties later. Like: disposal? Who’s going to insure that the active ingrediants don’t arrive on the black (weapons) market or poison the environment? IMHO I would think that the cost to destroy exceeds the original cost to deploy. Further along those lines I would think that our side is making a little cash donation toward the effort. No?