Recently in Local Stuff Category
This snowfall is supposed to dump another foot of gerbil worming on us today.
We got a couple of inches then it switched over to rain. That happens a lot as close to the ocean as we are.
So instead of snow right now, we have what is left over from the last storm, and flooding. Inland they are getting hammered. Both my office and the location I've been working at in Princeton are closed today. However, I have remote access so I'm continuing the job from home.
That's pushing 4 feet of snow in the past 6 weeks at the Joisey Shore. And places inland and south have beat that by a couple of feet. There were places in Jersey that got 3 feet in the first storm, 2 feet in the second, and a foot and a half in this one.
Update: Well, I got all my work done remotely, and it's now 5PM and snowing to beat hell. I expect to be buried again by the morning. What an adventure. I can't even get a good estimate on how much show we got.
It's now 10PM and looking at the tire tracks in the road it looks like only about 8 inches (Thank you rain). There was so much snow in the yard already, I can't tell the latest accumulation amount by looking there. My nephew, 40 miles northwest, got AT LEAST 2 feet of new snow, on top of the 2 feet he got a few days ago. The total so far for South Jersey is a record 65.5 inches...all in the past 6 weeks.
Gormaggedon, indeed.
I don't know how I missed this technology.
I had heard of them of course, but visions of the eye-bleeding horrors of past hand-held digital reading devices danced in my head...so I ignored them.
I probably have 20 Gigs of electronic books on my desktop, laptop, and DVDs. They are wonderful time fillers on some of my long trips...But you need a computer to read them.
This Kindle is amazing. Light, flat, comfortable to read, and will hold hundreds of books. The screen is a type of technology that isn't backlit and only uses power when you turn a page...so the battery lasts for days. You do need ambient light, as you would for a real book, but the device does have an accessory plug for a little reading light.
Best of all is all the ways you can get books on it. This device is a cell-phone type appliance.
There are thousands of free classics on Amazon, and even current hardcovers are available at paperback prices. They are beamed via wireless to the Kindle in seconds, once you register your device with an email address and serial number.
I installed a free PDF to Kindle converter on my laptop and then dragged the converted file to the Kindle using USB.
You can zip a doc file and email it to your kindle and it will show up on the device in the proper format. There is a 15 cent/MB charge for this.
You can send a doc file as an attachment to kindle and they will convert it for free and send it back...then you can drag it to the Kindle over the USB. There is no charge for anything you do with the Kindle over the USB.
PDFs, Doc, HTML, Text...all can be used with the Kindle.
...and the absolute best thing is that I can take pictures of it with my Nikon digital SLR I got for Xmas.
Yeah, the picture could be better, but just I'm learning how to use this thing. Bugger off.
8" of Global Warming so far. It's 9:30PM at the Jersey Shore, and The snow is forecast for all night.
12:16 AM and a ruler disappears in the snow in the back yard. Probably 14-16" by the morning.
Yep. Well over a foot. The weather folks are saying 22" in Ocean County...altho we're so close to the ocean I think we got a bit less. Shoveled out to the car (which I park in the side yard when snow is coming), crank up the 4WD and use that to break out to the road (where the plow left ridges 3 feet high) and bull thru. Rinse, repeat until I have a nice flat landing strip. Then drive around to the front and drive back and fro by the mailbox until can be accessed by the mail lady.
I spent the day installing
This
And
This
And
This
And
This
Naturally the new vanity was higher than the old one, so the sink-high electrical fixture had to go up the wall, the plumbing didn't fit under the bowl, and the over-the-medicine-cabinet light now needs to be replaced. The vanity, surprisingly, was an inch or two shorter than the old one, so the floor molding needs to be redone.
At the end of the job, the wife's frowning comment.
Looks too nice for this house.
They installed a turning block and tackle in another tree and fixed a rope to the top of the tree on the house. After cutting back as much as they could, they winched the bad tree off the top of the house and swung it down onto the front yard.
That, plus trimming back many broken branches on other trees, taking down a smaller tree, and cleaning up took 3 hours.
Tomorrow they'll be back to grind the two stumps below ground level.
Tree Service: Two trees need to come down. With stumps ground out $750. Not too bad. Many more emergency jobs in the area tho...probably won't get to it until Monday.
Bob the tree guy, who we have used for years, tells me Toms River got off easy. Parts of Bayville have an average of one tree down per yard...with funnel clouds sighted. This cell phone picture was taken by a neighbor down at the river 5 minutes before it hit...this location in Island Heights is about 1/2 mile west from where we are along the river. The river drains west to east into the Barnegat so you are looking directly south. This storm ripped right along the coast.
It's comin' right for us!!!!
ROCHESTER - Frederick D. Hunt Jr., 54, died at Frisbie Memorial Hospital, Rochester, on Friday June 26, 2009 as a result of injuries sustained from a fall.
Good man, good guy to argue with. Jesuit trained debater. Former Marxist who came over to the light. Miss ya, Fred.
You get a typical wireless router, but is has a couple of extra phone ports on it for powered wireless hand-held phones. We were also able to 'port' our veteran land-line phone number to the internet router so the home phone number didn't have to change.
Because the hand-held phones need to be plugged into the router, I had both of our hand-helds plugged in and charging in my office. I had been thinking about stringing new phone lines thru the house that would terminate in my office instead of out on the side of the house where the Verizon line came in. In this way I could move the hand-helds back to the rooms they were in originally.
One of the Directors at work has the system and had a better idea. He disconnected just the external Verizon line from the phone junction box on the side of his house (to cut down static) and left the rest of the lines (going into the house) connected. He then plugged the router's analog phone port into a phone jack in the room where he had the router. That line (like all of them) are interconnected by the Verizon junction box on the outside of the house...he then had an internet phone connection to every existing jack.
To solve the 'no phones when the power goes out' problem he added a cheap UPS to the router. There is so little power being used by the phones...he still gets over an hour of usage if there is a blackout.
Unlimited local and long-distance for $10. T-Mobile.
In my case...
I've always wondered what these things were. They're on the wires allong the bridge over the Barnegat Bay. I thought they might be for snow or wind management. Turns out they're for Helicopters.
If I was a Yurp I would have been sitting in a cafe complaining about America.
If I was a Beaner I would have been wading across the river to sneak into America.
If I was a Canuk, I would be shivering in front of a fire watching Hockey on a black and white TV.
If I was Asian, I'd be at work already.
If I was a Russki I'd be drunk.
If I was Italian I'd be making love to somebody else's wife.
If I was an Arab I'd be beating my wife or goat, whichever.
If I was from Haiti I would be scraping wallpaper glue off the wall to boil for dinner.
But I Aint...
I'm American, so I went shopping.
A man who broke into an East County Line Road house early Friday morning was in critical condition after being shot by the home's owner.
About 5 a.m. the homeowner, whose name was not released by authorities, awoke to find Tucker inside his home. The homeowner, described by authorities as an elderly man who lived alone, then shot Tucker from a distance of about 20 feet and dialed 911 to report the break-in, Mohel said.
Nice, a head shot. However, this isn't Sparta
The New Jersey statute outlining when it is justifiable to use deadly force within a private dwelling is extremely nuanced and built on a long history of case law, said Ronald F. DeLigney, first assistant Ocean County prosecutor.
A homeowner, when under the "reasonable belief" that force is immediately necessary to protect himself or others against the use of unlawful force by an intruder, can shoot, he said.
"The reasonable belief exists when the actor, to protect (himself) within his own dwelling at the time of the offense, the encounter between the actor and intruder was sudden and unexpected, compelling the actor to act instantly, and the actor reasonably believed that the intruder would inflict personal injury upon the actor or others in the dwelling," DeLigney said.
As the investigation continues, the homeowner could be charged in the shooting, authorities said. Ultimately, the decision whether or not to present a case against him to a grand jury will be made by the Prosecutor's Office.
Note who wasn't charged...
Tucker, who was not charged, gained access to the house by stepping on an object outside and entering a kitchen window, Mohel said. It is unknown how much time he spent inside, but he was shot near the front door at a landing to stairs leading to the home's second floor.
CABELA'S PLANNING TO BUILD MEGA-STORE
IN EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.
SIDNEY, NE - Cabela's, the World's Foremost Outfitter of hunting, fishing and outdoor gear, announced that it is in negotiations to build one of its world-famous retail stores at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, N.J.
Experience a Cabela's Retail Store. Check out our store Photo Gallery and our Video Tour.
Map of New Jersey The store, part of the Meadowlands Xanadu sports, leisure, family entertainment and shopping complex, would be similar in size to the Cabela's retail showroom in Kansas City, Kan. and Buda, Texas.
The Meadowlands store would be built in Cabela's trademark style mixing a décor of museum-quality animal displays with colorful dioramas, huge aquariums stocked with native fish and a centerpiece indoor mountain displaying trophy animals interacting in realistic re-creations of their natural habitats. Cabela's retail stores are known as top-notch education and entertainment destinations, many of which are the leading tourist attractions in their respective states.
To operate the new store, Cabela's would expect to employ as many as 500 people, who would join the Cabela's family of more than 8,000 employees. Employees are expected to come from East Rutherford and the surrounding area to join Cabela's family of staff members famous for their outdoor lifestyle and intimate knowledge of outdoor products.
"By combining everything the Cabela's retail experience offers with the excitement of the Meadowlands Xanadu complex, we can create the premier destination for sporting enthusiasts along the East Coast," said Cabela's President and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Highby. "We believe Cabela's is the perfect fit to bring the outdoors to the Meadowlands and with so many valued customers who live the Cabela's lifestyle nearby, we would expect this retail store to be an overwhelming success."
"So many people are coming together to make this work," Highby said. "We really appreciate the efforts of all the people, including the Mills Corporation and all the others who are working to make this happen."That's a lot closer than Hamburg Pa.
Maybe
Playing Possum.
Just before bed I take the mooch out for his evening wizz in the back yard and he starts barking to beat hell over near the side fence...enough that my wife comes out to see what's up.
I go in for a flashlight and hand it to her.
OMYGOD, it's a dead baby possum.
No it ain't
OMYGOD, get a bag and throw it in the trash
Wait a bit
OMYGOD, if you wait it'll be full of maggots
Take the mooch in and wait a bit
Sure enough...dead baby possum to live streak of fur in the blink of an eye.
Hence the term.
Excellent job tho. Eyes open and glazed, tongue hanging out. Pretty impressive for a first try, I expect. Fooled the dog, fooled the wife. Me, I was just lazy enough to want to throw it in the trash in the morning...so instead I got to look like I was some kind of BeastMaster of the Jersey Shore.
As is the rule in coffee shops, our waiter is a handsome young lad who seats us against the front windows.
...just as some young thing slams against said windows to get his attention...pasting her boobs flat against the panes, wiggling around and making odd noises. Nice show.
"You charge extra for that", says I. "Too Young", says he.
Gay, I figure.
A nasty windy rainy night, but a fun evening of food and music subsidized by my children. Amanda sprung for the tickets, and Jesse for dinner at the Main Street Bisto...Shepard's Pie, soda bread, and Port.
One of the guys was out with sickness in the family (the piper on the right) and the female singer they usually have was down with the flu. They still had bagpipers, additional musicians, singers, harpists, step dancers, child performers, and an altogether rousing show. There were also performers of tap and a style of chair dancing only seen up in logging country.
Time for a story....
Kim's parent's were on a vacation to Ireland wandering around a village just soaking in the flavor. Kim tells me her Dad has a 'Mr. Magoo' style ability to wander into interesting adventures and this time it was no different.
After getting lost for a bit, Dad finds his way back to Mom and drags her back the way they came...'You've got to see this'.
They come to a house where the most amazing music is being blasted out the windows and open doors by guys sitting in the kitchen. Getting noticed, Kim's parents were invited into the house to listen.
Afterwards they exclaimed how good the guys were and that they had to get an album out there. Yep, it was the Chieftains gigging it up at one of the guy's mother's house decades ago. 43 albums, a half-dozen emmys, and an Oscar in '75 for best song.
Not bad for a kitchen band.
...from the wife.
ON HALLOWEEN, IF YOU HEAR A CREEPY CONTINUAL SCRATCHING AT THE WINDOW, IT'S PROBABLY JUST A BRANCH.
On a lunch visit with my son and Dr Kim, I remarked about the quantity of black treerats running around Princeton campus. I was told they were a genetic experiment gone wrong in the '40s and spread. Sounds good, but some checking shows isolated natural populations in lots of places.
I prefer to believe that these, along with Hillary, are a sign of the coming apocalypse.
Of course my answer to everything is...buy guns, folks.
Amanda responds...
I've noticed the black squirrels over the years too, Dad. I always called them ninja squirrels (ninja tree rats to you.). This is what I got off the net about the experiment myth.
Fact: Black squirrels may be ubiquitous at
Black Squirrels at Princeton University:
see what I could find about them.
Here's a web page with some general information about black squirrels. A page discussing "Princeton Myths" has this to say about black squirrels: "Black squirrels may be ubiquitous at
Do genetics determine the persistence of black squirels? Here's a discussion. A quote: "This mutant of the gray squirrel resides primarily in northern climates. Biologists surmise that the black fur more readily absorbs the rays of the sun, thereby keeping its owner warmer during cold winters. Selective genetics has given the black squirrel this survival advantage. One of the reasons they seem to be more abundant in cities is that their black coloration is more readily spotted in rural areas by predators, primarily birds of prey."
I'm guessing that the black coat's advantage/disadvantage may account for the squirrels' survival in
Not surprisingly,
New Jersey's population drain starting to hit state hard
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - New Jersey's accelerating population loss is starting to have significant economic and fiscal consequences for the state, according to a Rutgers University report that found the state may be becoming a less attractive locale.
The report found the state lost 231,565 people between 2002 and 2006, including 72,547 people last year. The latter was the fourth highest loss in the nation behind only California, Louisiana and New York.
Meanwhile, North Carolina grew by 807,000 people over the four-year period, displacing New Jersey last year as the nation's 10th most populous state, the report stated.
"New Jersey residents have been sentenced to a lifetime term of brutal and ever-increasing taxes without any realistic hope of parole as long as the Democrats are in a position to keep spending their money and running up the credit cards," said Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce, R-Morris.
Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance described the report as "devastating."
"People are voting with their feet," said Lance, R-Hunterdon. "We have to go on a fiscal diet and under no circumstances should we raise taxes yet again."
...I feel like this
But I am getting better, I think. The Doctor called today, he got my most recent bloodtests, and everything was OK.
Maybe I'll get more acupuncture this weekend.
As I heal from this stroke, the most interesting things are happening to this beat up old vessel I wear. I have been in tune with my body over the past several years due to my diabetes, gaging my sugar-levels by physical clues. These past 6 weeks have been an education.
As minor muscles come back, they hurt. Imagine not using a muscle for a month or so and then stressing it. You can't favor the little sucker though, or else you'll never get back to normal. My left hand, my face, and my leg are working better, but hurting a bit more.
Pain truly is weakness leaving the body.
Dr. Kim explained to me that the brain is weaving new neural pathways for my fine motor control. As the Axons form, they are not yet covered by a myelin sheath and are electrically inefficient connectors to the synapses. I can see this. My motor control is getting much better but only if I move slowly...the connections are not efficient enough yet for fast and smooth motion.
I am also feeling a strange side-effect of this formation of new pathways...muscles never normally used are getting stimulated. The outer ear (the pinna) has intrinsic muscles, such as the - helicis major, helicis minor (helix being the rim of pinna) tragicus, antitragicus transverse and obliques auriculae, these small muscles help maintain or alter the shape of the outer ear to some extent.
They are twitching in my left ear. It is the strangest feeling to have the a muscle on the top rim of your ear start twitching when you never knew it was there. It doesn't bother me because it tells me something is going on in my brain...something is being rewired. Eventually it stops, and my motor control is better.
The numbness is nearly gone from my hand, and slowly receding from my jaw. I can fake a normal walk if I'm not too tired.
I'm looking forward to more twitchy muscles I didn't know I had.
The lovely and crackshot Dr. Kim (late of Bali, Bangkok, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo), house MD from the Ming Qi Natural Healthcare Center on Madison Avenue came by today. She stuck me full of pins and wired me up to electrodes. 20 mins on my belly with pins in my back and legs, 20 mins on my back with pins in my face, jaw, ear, hands, and legs...throbbing to the death metal beat of the electricity. That and doctor-chatter..."and then I missed and stuck the needle right through his..." Yikes!
Amazingly painless, yet a strange experience...I believe I experienced Einsteinian Relativity as time slowed to infinity whilst waiting for the 20 minutes to end, finger tendons jerking in time to the beat. I actually could feel secondary effects when the needles hit home...like ice water traveling down a vein from the point of needle entry.
I didn't expect much from one treatment, but I believe some of the numbness has left my jaw. Cool. This treatment isn't to cure anything (after all a stroke isn't a headache), but hopefully help accelerate the healing process.
Almost 4 weeks since my stroke and recovery seems to be taking forever. Progress to me is measured in millimeters it seems sometimes. Most little successes happen as a surprise.
Today I caught myself driving down the Parkway at 200 mph as I usually do, but left handed with my right hand loose on my leg...my normal driving mode. Seein' my left hand has had a life of it's own for a month, I have not been using it to drive as I normally would do - being left handed and all. It was jerking around too much to hold a steering wheel. I guess I'm getting the fine motor control back, but slowly. When I am sitting and working, I feel almost normal...but moving around is an adventure and it's easy to get tired.
The numbness is gone from my left hand except for a bit of tingling on the end of one finger, but my jaw is still numb. Walking is doable, sometimes it actually feels normal, but most of the time I feel out of balance and lurchy. Typing is slow, but has to be good rehab for the hand...altho it does gets tired and stiff. After I sit at work or home for a while my left leg gets stiff too and I have to get up and walk around a bit.
I can see how awful rehab must be for people with more debilitating strokes...this is a pain in the ass even at the level I got smacked.
I have two canes at home. A big ol' oak sucker you could use to dent an Abrams Tank, and one of those light extending aluminum jobbies. I am using neither because (1) I don't want to depend on a cane to walk whilst I am recovering from this stroke, and (2) neither of them is really cool enough for a staggering stud like me.
So I've been looking for canes...and what do I see today...
We have our bloodthirsty canes, our fighting canes, nasty walking sticks, and slightly less-nasty walking sticks.
I just need to figure out which would all-around work best, and still get taken on a plane. The City stick is kind of cool...but so is this one. Get both and charge it to my insurance?
Shooting
Capt. Michael Mohel identified the assailant as Richard Stanek, 27. Dougard said police were negotiating with Stanek by cell phone but then lost contact.
"He has been talking to us on the cell phone," the chief said. "About 10 minutes ago, his cell phone went dead. We will provide him with communication."
"This is going to end peacefully," Dougard said.
The chief said the gunman was alone in the home with multiple weapons, Mohel said. He would not describe the relationship between the victim and assailant.
Dougard said the victim was shot at least three times. Mohel said police were alerted by a neighbor who heard shouting and a gunshot coming from the home.
The Brick Township SWAT team was part of the large contingent of police that descended on the blue-collar neighborhood of single-family homes, Dougard said. He said snipers from Brick and Ocean County were dispatched to the scene.
All the neighbors of Van Ness Drive were evacuated.
