Hurricane Ike and Swimming in the Rain

This morning, early, I was swimming in the rain, swimming in the rain, what a beautiful feeling, swimming in the rain.

And it was cold. We only got in the 80s yesterday and 60s overnight, which cools down the pool water quickly. That and a lot of cold rain fell. That's the big rain barrel in the photo, looking through the trees and rain, this morning, before I went downstairs and got wet and cold in the early morning light.

More rain is likely to fall in the pool this weekend with Hurricane Ike now predicted to possibly dump up to 5 inches of rain in the Dallas/Fort Worth zone, along with up to 50mph winds. And possibly spawn tornadoes.

Evacuees from South Texas are likely going to start heading this way today and tomorrow. I hope Alma is okay and found a ride out of Port Aransas. Someone commented on the Alma Hurricane blogging of yesterday, offering Alma refuge in their condo in San Antonio.

Monkey Boy Injury

During my long long month in Tacoma of late, staying at my sister's, with a frequently grumpy Kristin and two hyper-active poodles, getting little sleep due to frequently falling out of my little army cot up in the HOT ZONE of their house that they call THE TROPICS, by Day 8, or was it 9, I found myself being called the, what seemed to me to be demeaning name, "House Monkey Boy".

This seemed borderline inappropriate to me, sort of politically incorrect, but these were elitist leftists calling me their House Monkey Boy, so I figured it was okay.

I'd be told, "Monkey Boy, pick up the dishes." "Monkey Boy, mow the lawn." "Monkey Boy. Go wash my car". "Monkey Boy. Vacuum all 3 floors and don't forget the stairs". "Monkey Boy. Move that cooler".

The moving the cooler Monkey Boy act occurred at Bay View State Park, up in the Skagit Valley. I was so stressed out by all the Monkey Boy orders that when I was ordered to move the cooler I banged my head 4 times on my biggest sister's ridiculously huge RV that gets .25 miles to the gallon. This left a big knot or two on my head.

The cooler-related Monkey Boy injuries were not the worst. I had some non-Monkey Boy injuries that occurred while helping a former acquaintance of mine move what appeared to me to be junk. That left me bruised and cut. In more ways than one. But I'm totally recovered from those injuries. I'm a fast healer.

I thought I left my string of Monkey Boy type injuries behind when I left Washington. But, a couple days ago I was a bit distracted while following a yapping latina, a door swung out, whacked me in the eye zone, knocked me off balance, which caused me to fall, leaving me with a seriously damaged eye, a bruise on my back and a bruise on my butt.

At the time this occurred I was tasked with a Monkey Boy type task, though here in Texas we are too polite to call anyone a Monkey Boy. But, sadly it is a Monkey Boy that I am and once more I'm recovering from a Monkey Boy injury.

In the meantime, I've had me a day. I've been up since around 2am. Why? Don't ask. Because I won't tell you. Suffice to say it was not a Monkey Boy related thing that woke me up so early.

And tomorrow I get to deal with an Unstoppable Woman in person. Yikes. That has bad thing written all over it.

A Russian Security Hole In My Website

Well, I heard from the Ukrainians regarding the problem I blogged about earlier today regarding Russian websites targeting my Eyes on Texas website.

After the scary Ukrainian response I called the U.S. phone line support and had no wait and quickly figured out the Ukrainian was feeding me misinformation.

Below is the technical support I got from Jenny the Ukrainian.....

I'm afraid there is a security hole in your web site that was used by hackers for sending spam through your site. The reason is that durangotexas.com/awstats/data/ folder has 777 permissions, it means that it is writable for anyone in the web. It is not secure to have permission for the folders set to 777 as it allows everybody to do everything to this file. Having files/folders with such permissions anyone can write to it. This means a security hole since everybody on the server can overwrite these files or can write, remove or overwrite files in the directories. You need to chmod your folder/files to permission mask 755 to prevent hacker's attacks in future. You can do it via Webshell or any standalone ftp client. 755 is a read permissions for owner, group and others; write permissions for owner ONLY; execute permissions for owner, group and others.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at anytime, we are available 24/7.

Kind regards,
Jenny Danilenko
Technical Support

Hurricane Ike Heading Towards Alma in Port Aransas?

Incoming from Alma, way down in Port Aransas on the South Texas Gulf Coast, regarding the possible visit to her town by Hurricane Ike.

It's an interesting Alma account of the mood of the locals as they fear the worst and hope for a good outcome for all of the coast.

Wow....here we go again. Please remember we live here because it's a wonderful place to live. I moved here about 3 months ago and have not been happier. It's not problem free, but I love walking everywhere, the clean air (my allergies have all but disappeared) and the fact that I already know so many of the locals and feel like I could retire here. It feels like home to me. Maybe I lived here in a past life...who knows?

I opened Sips Coffee & Wine at 7am today just like any other day. I had one weird, crappy customer first thing, so the mood set was not a good one.

He must be a local. The locals are um...different here. Mostly, you'll find they are rednecks, hippies, or pirates. There is a particular personality type that tends to move here. You have to be a little bit pirate to fit in. I mostly am old hippie and just a smidge pirate. But, I do love my old country music. Hank Williams and Patsy Cline rule.

St Jo's Island just on the other side of the Channel was in fact, a pirate cove and there is legend about a dagger buried with Jean Lafitte's treasure to guard it. Neither have been found. I believe many of those pirates' descendents have settled in Port Aransas and their families are the town founders. There is a Port Aransas accent I've noticed in the locals' men folk. It's a little bit Spanish, Texan, and something else I can't place. I've met some fo' real pirates and they talk with that "arrrrrr" sound you hear in cartoons and caricatures. I like them. They are true originals and have been nothing but nice to me. Make no mistake these people are survivors and no one wants to hear any whining. I'm a whiner.

Yet today, all the customers had the same question (as if I had an answer). "Well, what do you think it's gonna do?" We look at each other with worried faces and say, "well, it doesn't look good. All we can do is pray". It was the same everywhere I went today. I rode the local trolley car to the Post Office (remember my car died about 2 weeks ago) and the lady trolley driver asks me, "Well, what do you think it's gonna do?" I gave my standard answer.

After I mailed a payment, I walked down to the IGA Grocery Store in town, bought a few groceries and another pair of those $5 sandals they had on sale after the busy summer season and the woman at the register asks me...well I think you know what she asked. I gave my, by now, standard answer.

As for me, I am fixing to (that's pretty Texan of me to say) see what I can do to reserve a Uhaul or Budget moving truck, the little one. If that fails, maybe I can rent an SUV or some other kind of truck in case I have to evacuate. I have to bring my 3 chihuahuas, my music gear, my computers, clothes, and as much as I can load out of this little "cottage".

So, I am writing to ask each of you to please say a prayer for me, my dogs, and Selena the cat. We, here in Port A, are praying for it to go way south to some uninhabited part of the Gulf Coast. No one here wants to wish it on anybody else, so we are praying that it goes way south. If it hits north of us, rain (flooding) will not be so bad. If it goes far enuf South, the same results are expected. But it looks like it's headed straight for Rockport (a very cool, picturesque place to live just 10 miles from here) based on the latest maps. But as we know from all the recent storms, the damn thing could do many of a number of things. So, we are trying to stay positive as some of the town has already started boarding up buildings. The trolley lady has already made arrangements for her trailor to get moved to Corpus. Oceans of Seafood (the restaurant and fish market across the street from Sips) is having a Hurricane Seafood Sale. I may go get me some of that. There's a front headed here which could divert the storm. We just don't know.

So, I'd be grateful for any positive thoughts, prayers, chicken sacrifices, whatever you can do with your most powerful thoughts to help me and the boys and Selena.

Thanks in advance and I'll keep you posted on this latest misadventure.

Take care....
love,
alma

Yoga Keeps Me Young

This morning's Fort Worth Star-Telegram had an article about a 90 year old Yoga Master, Kantilal Talati, who has been doing yoga for decades, after he had a heart attack when he was 44.

When asked how old he is, he always says "18".

He's never sick, never gets a headache. And takes no medications.

I'm often asked why I look so much younger than my 39 years. I attribute my relative youthfulness also to decades of yoga. It keeps you limber. Yoga is really easy to do. You just have to keep at it til the postures become second nature. The head stand took me the longest to perfect. It's great for cerebral blood flow.

Now get out of that chair and go stretch yourself. Or quit sitting and stand on your head for awhile.

Stormy This Morning in Texas

That's the view this morning from Miss Puerto Rico's balcony, here in the East Fort Worth zone of North Texas. Which means there is likely no biking or hiking in this boy's future today.

Which is likely a good thing, since I've been up since the wee wee hours.

I just read that now that Ike is finishing up doing a lot of damage in Cuba he's heading towards Texas.

I don't think we'll get an evacuation order here. But Texas Governor Rick Perry is readying evacuations in 88 counties is the South Texas/Gulf Coast zone with 7,500 National Guard on standby. FEMA is waiting a day or two til they have a better idea as to Ike's path before beginning evacuations.

The Russians Are Attacking Me

For 3 or 4 months now I've been being vexed by Russians.

In my webstats for my Eyes on Texas website I get a list of external websites that link to mine. There are several dozen Russian websites supposedly linking to mine, currently showing either 38 or 39 hits from each Russian website. This number will go up as the month progresses, all at the same pace. If I go to one of the Russian website I see no link to mine.

I've asked the support people at my webhost for help. Unfortunately, and maybe ironically, the support center is in the Ukraine and the responses are usually gibberish. I'd think they were in cahoots with the Russians, but the Ukraine and Russia are currently not on the friendliest of terms.

In another weird, possibly related problem, my Google Webmaster Tools currently shows over 6,000 404 No Page Found Errors. This means websites are linking to pages on my website that do not exist. All of the links go to a sub-folder of the very AWSTATS webstat thing that shows me the long list of Russian websites.

And in a possible further irony, it was the aforementioned Ukrainians who installed the AWSTATS for me when their other webstats generator kept malfunctioning.

I hate stuff like this. It's very frustrating. And I don't know if it's hurting me or not. Below are some of the Russian websites with their mysterious links to me. Very vexing.

http://dancemates.ru/
http://equipmentbusinesses.info/
http://www.deciduoustrees.info/
http://cassations.ru/
http://fruitherbs.info/
http://www.wildberry.ru/
http://sciencelead.ru/
http://therapeutist.ru/
http://educationalprofessions.info/
http://www.littlelizard.info/
http://childadvice.ru/
http://antiallergia.info/
http://bestmeatmarket.net/
http://towngrow.ru/

I am not an Idiot

According to what I read on the subject, near as I can tell, I'm not an idiot.

Historically "idiot" originally referred to a person lacking professional skill, a person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning. "Idiots" were seen as having bad judgment in public and political matters. Over time, the term "idiot" shifted away from its original connotation of selfishness and came to refer to individuals with overall bad judgment. In modern English usage, the terms "idiot" and "idiocy" describe an extreme folly or stupidity, and its symptoms (foolish or stupid utterance or deed).

Which, I guess, sort of explains why George W. is sometimes described by rudely inappropriate, disrespectful sorts, as an idiot.

According to Wikipedia, in several states idiots do not have the right to vote. Wikipedia does not say how the states decide someone is an idiot.

Did the word "idiot" derive from the word "id"?

According to Freud, "the id is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learnt from our study of the dream-work and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of this is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations ... It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle."

The mind of a newborn child is regarded as completely "id-ridden", in the sense that it is a mass of instinctive drives and impulses, and demands immediate satisfaction. This view equates a newborn child with an id-ridden individual—often humorously—with this analogy: an alimentary tract with no sense of responsibility at either end.

I have known people like that.

Village Creek Natural Area's Sad History of Eminent Domain Abuse

There is a park in west Arlington that I frequent that's only about 3 miles from my abode. The park is called Village Creek Natural Area, despite what you see on the entry sign.

Actually it would make more sense to call this an historical area rather than a natural area. It's not all that natural. But it's loaded with history.

The Village Creek valley was the home of one of the largest groups of Native Americans in Texas. Indians had farmed this area for 1000s of years. The tribes that lived here were the Anadarko, Bidais, Caddo, Keechi, Tawakoni, Waco, Waxahachie and Wichita. The tribes were all part of what was known as the Caddo Confederacy.

When the Republic of Texas came into being the Village Creek Indians were soon to lose their villages. By 1830 the United States had removed all Indians living east of the Mississippi. Many of the natives did not like the new Indian Territory, now known as Oklahoma. Tribes like the Cherokee, Biloxi, Ioni, Delaware and Chickasaw headed south to Texas, joining the Caddo Confederacy in signing a peace treaty with the Republic of Texas.

I don't know what the Caddo Confederacy got out of a peace treaty. Likely more misery.

By the time of the signing of a peace treaty the Caddos had been pretty much run out of Village Creek by repeated expeditions (battles) with the Texas militia who were clearing the area of Indians to make way for settlers who by 1841 were eager to get a piece of land grants.

Before being destroyed in the Battle of Village Creek, in 1841, a whole series of villages lay on either side of the creek for about 5 miles. 300 acres of corn grew near the villages. These were peaceful natives who's villages and homes the Texans destroyed. Shameful.

I hadn't realized til I connected the dots that Arlington has such a long long sad history of cowboys destroying native's homes.

The photos were taken this afternoon. There are huge oak trees and a lot of shade. You can stay comfortable under those trees even when it is real hot. Paved trails run through the 'natural' area. There are a lot of picnic tables, that I've seldom seen used. Like the ones in the last photo.

Time For Some Campaignin'