Tandy Hills Park and the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

I had not talked to my ex-wife for almost 2 years, so I called her yesterday while I was lounging by the pool (I mention lounging by the pool to annoy my 2 Northwest readers who are shivering today).

And to further annoy my 2 Northwest readers, today I went hiking at Tandy Hills Park and it was so HOT I had to hike shirtless and even then was too HOT. And now I'm slightly sunburned.

The wildflowers are sprouting out all over, including Tandy Hills Park. The photo I took of that pink wildflower you see above does not quite capture the almost neon-like flashiness of the color.

I'm pretty sure the purple flowers you see on the right are not wildflowers, they look like something that came from a bulb, like flowers you see in my former locale, that being the Skagit Valley of Washington.

Speaking of flowers and the Skagit Valley, this year is the 25th Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. Tulips, Flags, Daffodils, Irises and I forget what other type flowers are grown commericially in the Skagit Valley with the resulting bulbs sent all over the world. The Tulip Festival lasts several weeks with events happening all over the valley. Depending on the weather around a million visitors show up causing awful traffic jams. To help spread the pain things like Tulip Town were built. Buses are brought in to provide a sort of mass transit system to try and cut down on the number of cars. If there was a place that you might call the Heart of the Tulip Festival that would likely be Roozengaarde with their huge show garden.

The wildflowers in Texas look like a natural version of the Skagit Valley's acres of planted color. A few Easters ago I went down to the Fredericksburg zone to hike Enchanted Rock. Just outside of Fredericksburg there is a wildflower seed producing place with planted fields. It's called Wildseed Farms and it was very similar to Roozengaarde, except instead of Dutch stuff like Windmills, Wildseed has Cowboys cooking BBQ which made Wildseed Farms smell way better than Roozengaarde.

Getting Lost at Bob Jones Park

Today I wanted to go to Sprouts Farmers Market to get oranges and since it is only a few miles further to Bob Jones Park I decided that'd be a good place to go on a hike.

Bob Jones Park is in a remote part of the town of Southlake on Lake Grapevine in the state of Texas. The Park is named for John Dolford "Bob" Jones. Bob Jones was the son of Alvis Jones and Alvis' slave, Elizabeth. The would make Bob Jones the slave of his father. After the Civil War Bob and his mom were freed. They bought a 60 acre farm. Bob got married to Meady Chisum, eventually having 10 kids and expanding their farm to nearly 2,000 acres.

When Grapevine dam was finished and Lake Grapevine began to grow behind it, most of Bob Jones' land ended up being under water. Of course, Bob Jones was long gone by then, his land had been split among his kids and grandkids. In the 1990s Southlake bought the land that became Bob Jones Park.

Which is where I went hiking today. And got lost. The developed part of Bob Jones Park leads to what amounts to being a nature preserve with it being a prime piece of the Cross Timbers ecosytem. There is some signage to help hikers find their way, like you see in the above photo.

But there are so many trails, most without signage, it becomes a fun confusing maze that is easy to get lost in. It did not help that today Lake Grapevine is in flood stage so many of the trails were under water. My worst time of getting lost at Bob Jones Park ended up turning an hour hike into a 3 hours with sore feet and serious hunger pangs.

Today's lost experience did not last too long. But I was happy to find my van and drive to Sprouts for those oranges. And some real nice red peppers.

Gar the Texan Libertarian

The most erudite Texan entity I've met during my long exile in the Lone Star State has been a mullet head who goes by the name of Gar. I call him Gar the Texan. Though Gar the Texan is, like I said, quite erudite, he at times has the ability to be quite baffling.

Like one time we pedaled bikes to the now defunct Heritage Park in downtown Fort Worth. It is sort of a historical monument located where Fort Worth began. As a Fort. However, despite the name and despite being born and raised in Texas, it came as a revelation to Gar the Texan that Fort Worth began as an actual Fort.

Gar the Texan is a card carrying member of the Libertarian Party. He regularly runs for the Texas legislature as a Libertarian. He gets hundreds of votes. He has not yet been elected.

Gar the Texan Libertarian married a former Communist East German girl. How one reconciles being a Libertarian while married to an ex-Communist I can't quite figure out. Not that I've actually spent all that much time trying to reconcile the seeming contradiction.

So, yesterday I learned that Gar the Texan is now sharing his eruditeness with the world via MySpace where he is Blogging his eruditeness for the enlightenment and amusement of the rest of humanity, rather than keeping it all to himself.

Be warned, if you go to Gar the Texan's MySpace page you will be blasted by some awful hard rock sounding thing blasting noise from the past, like the 70s. The mullet head era. Or like we called that style up in the northwest, a Pocatello Doo. Pocatello is an isolated town in Idaho that almost unanimously adopted the mullet head look. Gar the Texan was born and raised in Kermit, Texas, an isolated town in Texas. Hence the mullet. Which I must admit he has long been rid of.

UPDATE: I have heard from the extremely vain, Gar the Texan. He objected to me sharing his 'old' look with my millions of readers. He demanded that I add a more recent photo and pointed me to his webpage for his Libertarian campaign to become the District 91 State Representative. I've not seen Gar the Texan in person in quite some time. It looks like he's had some work done to his face in addition to the new haircut.

Barnett Shale Explodes the North Texas Economy

Today I had to drive through the industrial wasteland of north Fort Worth to pick up a check for a website. En route I drove by at least a dozen gas drilling operations in various stages.

A few years ago it was discovered that a field of natural gassified shale was much larger than earlier believed. Seismic testing kept finding the stuff further and further south. At first the gas drilling only took place on the fringes of the Dallas/Fort Worth urban zone.

And then in 2003 an oilman named Mike Moncrief, with interests in all 4 of the gas drilling companies that are exploiting the Barnett Shale, was elected mayor of Fort Worth. Soon after the new mayor took office drilling started happening all over town, in formerly peaceful neighborhoods, in parks, near parks and across the street from where I live.

Experiencing it, up close and personal, the gas drilling operation was as bad as all the complaints I'd been reading. While the drilling is underway it is very noisy, making all sorts of odd high pitched noises, day and night. The rigs are lit up very bright. When the drilling is done the next bad thing starts up, that being dozens upon dozens of trucks hauling in water to pour down the hole to fracture the shale and release the gas. I've no idea how this works. But I do know there is a problem with the resulting polluted water. The powers that be are allowing the drillers to pump out the water and pump it into vast underground cavern like holes in the ground where some believe it will eventually contaminate the aquifers from which much of Texas gets its water.

As most people know, things are different in Texas. Like I've previously mentioned the perfectly valid concept of taking private land for the public good is perverted in Texas with our nation's worst cases of eminent domain abuse with the worst abuser being Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys. And then you have the mayor of a big city, with obvious conflicts of interest, overseeing meetings where decisions are made in favor of the gas drillers.

Except for Fort Worth's valiant alternative newspaper, FW Weekly, no one seems to care that the Mayor of Fort Worth, with interests in each of the gas drilling companies, should not be making decisions regarding the drilling from which he financially benefits handsomely.

One good thing, a group of people in East Fort Worth have turned into Rabblerousers and are fighting the city with some success. Last week the aforementioned FW Weekly had a real good article about the group of activists. They were mostly moved to action due to Chesapeake Energy letting it be known they wanted to slant drill under Tandy Hills Park.

I have sort of been part of the Eastside Rabblerousers, doing my part to help rouse the rabble. The Rabblerousers have a real good website. On their website you can find the link to my contribution, that being a webpage I called "Fort Worth Flatulence". It gets a lot of page views.

One of the leaders of the Eastside Rabblerousers is a man named Don Young. He organized an event called Prairie Fest to raise awareness of Tandy Hills Park and the need to protect it. This year's Prairie Fest is in just a few weeks. If you are in the D/FW zone and want to attend, go to the Tandy Hills Park link above and you'll find all the info you need.

Jerry Jones and the Ongoing Dallas Cowboy Stadium Scandal

Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys are one of those rare gifts that just keep on giving. My 2 longtime readers may remember me mentioning Jerry Jones and the disgustingly scandalous way he and the Dallas Cowboys went about getting a new stadium.

Awhile back the Cowboys announced their new ticket prices, including having to pay up to something like $50,000.00 for a seat license that then allowed you to pay up to something like $500.00 for a game ticket.

Well, there was a lot of squawking from those who can not afford such prices, like the very people who's homes and business were robbed from them so Jerry Jones could build his monument to himself.

Well, Jerry Jones, well known philanthropist that he is, came up with a wonderful solution to the problem of his ticket prices keeping most people from being able to afford to get into his new stadium that is being built on their land.

Jerry Jones is proposing a 'Share a Ticket' concept. You gather together a group of people and buy one ticket. And share it. One person watches for a pre-determined length of time and when his time is up he leaves the stadium and passes off the ticket to the next person.

While you wait your turn with the ticket you will get to watch the game on big screen TVs. I assume in high definition.

It is not known how the 'Share a Ticket' deal is going to work. What if a guy is so caught up in the game that he forgets to share? How many people can share a ticket? Like if it takes 20 people to make it affordable, how would you manage the time sharing? How do you determine who goes in first? How would it be fair if the last person goes into the stadium and then the game goes into overtime?

In an earlier bone tossed to the unwashed masses it was announced that up to 20,000 fans will be able to buy tickets to a standing room only plaza outside the stadium where they can watch the game on TV, thus allowing them to feel like they are part of the game atmosphere, but at a bargain price. It is not known if this plaza will be sheltered from the elements. It is also not known if sports fans will have to buy a standing room license in order to buy a ticket. Or if the 'Share a Ticket' concept will also be used for the standing room only viewing plaza.

I've had feedback from all over the world regarding the Dallas Cowboy Stadium Scandal. You can go here and read them. Some are pretty funny. Some are pretty sad. A few are really stupid. I've not heard from Jerry Jones.

First Texas Tornado Sirens of 2008

Yesterday, sometime around 3 in the afternoon, the Tornado Warning Sirens went off for the first time this year. There is always a little feeling of excitement when the sirens go off. WeatherBug had been going off with various warnings, like Severe Thunderstorms, Golf Ball size Hail in North Tarrant County (I live in Tarrant County, that's where Fort Worth is). And a Tornado Watch that lasted til 2am this morning.

When the Tornado Sirens go off and if you've not lost power you can usually find out from the TV where the Tornado is located. I've had 2 close calls since I've been at my current location. Both occurred in the late afternoon. With the first one it'd been stormy and windy for hours and then suddenly it got dark and the wind picked up. The sirens went off. Turned on the TV to see that a Tornado had touched down in Handley. That is about a mile south of my abode. The tornado was heading my direction. I was preparing to make a run for it when the Tornado turned east via the I-30 freeway and headed towards Dallas. I did not see the Tornado. All I saw was a big black cloud.

My second close call occurred about a year ago. I was at Oakland Lake Park, listening to the radio on my headphones. The Emergency Broadcast System broke in over and over again. When it was reported the line of storms had hit west Fort Worth I knew it was maybe time to head home. And then I started seeing lightning strikes east of downtown Fort Worth. I then realized the storm was moving faster than the reports. I hurried to my van and headed back here. I remember calling Lulu so she could hear the dramatic Emergency Broadcast warning messages. She answered her phone just in time to hear the warning say Tornadoes had been spotted.

By the time I got to my abode the Tornado Sirens were very loud. A forming Tornado passed right over where I live. I did not see this, but others did. All I knew was it was really loud. That particular Tornado touched down just north of my location and tossed around a lot of storage containers. It was a very minor Tornado.

Yesterday's storm quickly passed. The photo above was taken after the storm had passed my location. In the photo we are looking east towards Dallas. When I took this photo the radio was saying there were several rotating cells (tornadoes in the making) above Dallas, along with Hail and a Severe Thunderstorm. The most odd thing about yesterday's Thunderstorm was it created almost non-stop Thunder. But I only saw one Lightning Strike.

Adolph the Cat & the 14 Signs of Fascism

My little sister got a cat named Adolph to join her two poodles, Blue & Max. Blue & Max have a Blog. They are currently whining about living under a Fascist regime that uses Gestapo tactics. No, they are not talking about the regime of King George, they are taking about their human caregivers.

I've tried to explain to Blue & Max that they are not living under a Fascist regime via showing them the 14 Signs of Fascism and suggesting that this pair of overwrought poodles think about it carefully so that they might see that they are not living under a Fascist regime, but instead a benevolent dictatorship. With good food.

Anyway, below are the 14 Signs of Fascism and click here to watch an interesting video that graphically demonstrates the 14 Signs of Fascism.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities, liberals, communists, socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Texas Convention Chaos

Cowboy Barack Obama may have pulled ahead of Hillary in yesterday's District Conventions step in the convoluted Texas method of choosing delegates to the Democrat National Convention.

My 2 long time readers may remember earlier this month when the Texas Two-Step Primary/Caucus election ended in mayhem and chaos. In Texas, in an innovation called the Texas Two-Step, you get to vote twice, once in the Primary and then later that same day you get to go to a Caucus and vote again. Trouble was the Caucus step of the two-step was badly organized and overwhelmed by too many voters. Many, such as me, gave up and went home.

The same thing happened at Saturday's Statewide District Conventions. After hours of frustrations many of the delegates gave up and left the Conventions, which began in the morning, with some lasting well into the night. At District 10, in Fort Worth, thousands were stuck in Will Rogers Coliseum, trying to find food, having music blasted at them, listening to speakers drone on, waiting in lines to sign in and get credentials. More than half of those who showed up in the morning left before voting.

Similar problems occurred all across Texas. By morning it was believed that Barack Obama had won the most delegates with the AP reporting Obama with 59% to Hillary's 41%. Hillary won the Primary vote 51% to Obama's 47%, giving Hillary 65 delegates and Obama 61. There are 67 delegates to be split between Hillary and Obama from yesterday's Conventions. Obama likely will now be able to claim he won Texas.

But who really knows? Texas elections are really confusing.

IX Web Hosting Outrage & Outage

My 2 long time readers may remember me mentioning my Web Host IX Webhosting's Ukrainian Support Center and the absurd responses I get from them when I have a little problem. Like my email not working. Or a couple months ago when tornadoes struck several states, including Kentucky, and my Web Host went down. I submitted a support ticket and was told there had been no downtime. So, I called the toll-free # to Kentucky and talked to a real person, an American, and told him the Ukrainians are claiming there was no downtime and are refusing downtime compensation. He then told the Ukrainians that there had been an outage and to give me downtime compensation.

So, on to today's nightmare. For several months I've been getting emails from the CEO of my web hosting company, Fathi Said, regarding moving their data center from Hopkinsville, Kentucky to Columbus, Ohio. I didn't much care as long as it didn't affect me.

And then a couple days ago in the latest email from Fathi I learned it would affect me. As in, well, I'll just go copy and paste their latest message on their help center webpage....

We are currently relocating all our servers and equipment from our present location in Hopkinsville, KY to our new state-of-the-art facility in Columbus, OH. The server relocation starts at 1am EST Saturday night. If your website or email service is unavailable after this time, please rest assured that our relocation team is working safely and securely to bring your service back up as fast as possible. We are expecting all services, including telephone support, to be back online by or before 8am EST on Sunday morning.

So, now do you see what I'm upset about? My websites all went down at midnight. It is now almost 5pm and they are still down. It was not til I read the above message did I realize they are actually physically moving the servers up to Ohio. I'm picturing a bunch of Kentuckians in pickup trucks heading north with my websites strapped down in back.

IX Webhosting is, supposedly, one of the biggest hosting companies in the world. Supposedly they have over 300,000 websites on their servers. I don't know how many are e-commerce websites that are making zilch today.

You can look at my AdSense stats from today in the above image and see I'm making zilch. Just one big $0.00.

So, I guess if they do ever come back online I'll be submitting a support ticket to the Ukrainians asking for downtime compensation. Again. And they'll tell me there was no downtime, there was no move to a new data center.

Now, usually when I get around to complaining or submitting a support ticket the problem is already fixed. I'll click on my website right now and see if that's the case this time. Nope. Still down. Earlier they at least had the courtesy to put up a page explaining why the websites were down. But, now it's just bringing up the basic "The page cannot be displayed" page.

I'm annoyed.

UPDATE: About an hour later and my websites are back working again, apparently successfully making the trip from Kentucky to Ohio.

Hillary and Harding

I grow tired of the ongoing calls for Hillary to concede to Obama and drop out of the race for the sake of party unity because, apparently, she can not win the nomination unless she wins all remaining primaries by huge margins and gets the votes of a majority of super delegates.

If Hillary stays in it is likely that neither she or Obama will have enough votes to win the nomination.

Now, to me, this would be a good thing, if only for the entertainment value. I'm not at all thinking of it as a good thing in the way Rush Limbaugh and his Operation Chaos does, in that this will tear apart the Democrats and give McCain the presidency.

In my lifetime I've never gotten to watch a brokered/deadlocked convention. There have been a few close ones, like the year of Reagan and Ford, but I've never seen a convention where the nomination did not occur on the first vote count.

In elections before I was born deadlocked conventions happened frequently. With very dubious results. That may have been part of what brought about the current way of trying to nominate a President, so that it is a done deal before the convention.

I'm pretty sure the last brokered, deadlocked convention was the Republican convention of 1920. General Leonard Wood and Governor Frank Lowden were deadlocked, neither with enough votes to win. Warren Harding had run in the race, but had only won the primary in his home state of Ohio.

The night of the deadlock a long meeting lasted til morning in a Chicago hotel. By the time dawn broke it was decided to swing support to Harding and give him the nomination, knocking off the Hillary and Obama of that era. This did not tear apart the Republican party.

Harding was brought to the hotel room and, before telling him the nomination was his, he was asked if he had any skeletons in his closet which might cause a problem. Harding answered "No". Neglecting to mention that he'd had little education, that he had a longstanding affair with the wife of one of his close friends and that he was a heavy boozer in the time of Prohibition.

Harding got the nomination and won the election and went on to being a very popular president who died in office before it was learned he led one of the most corrupt administrations in U.S. history, right up there on the corruption scale with Clinton and Nixon. Had he not died Harding would likely have been removed from office by impeachment or take the Nixon resignation route.

Like Clinton, Harding was also married to a domineering wife who ruled the roost and wore the pants in the family, but turned a blind eye to a lot of his shenanigans, like the drinking, gambling and womanizing.

Harding was the first Senator elected President. This year unless something goes seriously awry we will also be electing a Senator to the Presidency.

So, if Harding could come to the nomination from a deadlocked convention, without tearing apart the party, and then win the Presidency, I don't see why a brokered, deadlocked Democrat convention might not have the same result.

And be a highly entertaining spectacle to watch.