Durango TV Blog

Sometimes I enjoy writing about something I've watched on TV. Usually I enjoy writing about it because in some way it has appalled or disgusted me. It's a good thing to vent.

But, except for the fact that I watched the TV show while in Texas it has nothing else to do with my life in Texas, which was what I thought the theme of my Durango Texas blog was going to be.

Sometimes I stifle myself from writing about something I've watched on TV due to it seeming somehow out of place. Well, dense boy that I am, the solution was obvious, but came to me slowly.

As in I've started a new blog, all about TV. Durango TV. I think I'm going to have fun with this one.

If you haven't heard Sarah Palin getting punked by a pair of Canucks from Montreal pretending to be French President Sarkozy, go to my new blog and listen to it. It is pretty funny. My favorite part is when Sarah gets asked if Joe the Plumber is her husband.

Seattle Pike Place Market YouTube Video Debacle

I'd wondered why the number of viewings of a short YouTube video I'd made of my August 7 walk through of Pike Place Market last summer seemed perpetually stuck on 24 views. Today I found out why.

YouTube had made several of my videos "No Longer Available For Viewing" for apparently no good reason. Including the Pike Place Market one.

I had not intended to spend more than the time it took to eat breakfast making and uploading a video of this morning's swim. And now this YouTube debacle has wasted most of the day. And made me cranky. Lord knows it is hard to make me cranky.

I did manage to escape YouTube and go hiking at Tandy Hills today. It was hot. Some like it hot. I didn't use to. But I do these days. If you don't like it hot you shouldn't live in Texas.

November 1 Swimming in North Texas

Don't forget to set your clocks back an hour tonight. I hate hearing that reminder over and over again. And what tragedy would occur if, God forbid, you forgot?

Today is the 1st of November, a couple days til the election, a few more weeks til Thanksgiving, then a few more weeks til Christmas, then one week til the New Year.

Unless it is freezing I intend to go swimming New Year's Day morning. I've pretty much figured out if the average temperature for any given day is in the 50 to 60 degree range, the water is okay to get in. As in this morning. at midnight it was 65, by morning it was 60. This made the pool the most pleasant temperature it's been in a week.

So, I stayed in it a long time. And my videographer documented my first day of November swim. (The video was uploaded to YouTube the morning of November 1. The upload seemed to be successful but YouTube is saying the video is no longer available. Why I don't know. More Google incompetence maybe?) I'll try again with the video...Okay, finally got the thing to work. What a waste of time.

Giant Caterpillar Roller Blading At Village Creek Natural Historic Area

I decided to go roller blading at Village Creek Natural Historic Area today. Roller blading there is a bit more adventurous than Quanah Parker Park. At Village Creek there are 4 hills you get to go down and back up. The hills curve and cause you to cross 2 dams at high speed.

I had my all time worst roller blade wreck at Village Creek. I never thought I'd go back there again on roller blades.

But today I did. It was fun. Just like at Quanah Parker Park, I found I didn't go down the Village Creek hills as fast as I used to, due to my need to put on some weight.

People with a lot of weight are so lucky. They get to go down hills fast and they can go in real cold water and not even feel it and don't even need to swim, they just bob up and down effortlessly due to their built-in auto inner tubes. I wish I could put on weight like that.

Back to today's blading. So, I'm rolling along and I looked down to see this big fuzzy thing, like a caterpillar on steroids, which is what I figured it was, eventually it would become one of those gigantic bat-like Texas moths that like to chase me when I'm wearing my wool cap.

In the photo above I'm stopped right above the giant caterpillar. In the photo on the right you see the giant caterpillar walking across the paved trail.

I think it was chasing me.

A Fort Worth Chesapeake Energy Bus & A Leak

After seeing them on the streets for months, today I was finally able to get a photo of one of the Fort Worth city buses covered with a Chesapeake Energy ad.

The ad says "Thanks Barnett Shale for 83,000 new jobs." The logo of Chesapeake Energy is all over the bus. As well as the AskChesapeake.com web address.

I did not know the Barnett Shale had produced 83,000 new jobs. Now that the drillers are scaling back how many of those jobs have been un-produced?

A non-Chesapeake Barnett Shale natural gas drilling waste water disposal operation out near Aledo, that's in Parker County, west of Fort Worth, was shut down by the Texas Railroad Commission after drilling waste was found on the ground with evidence of an underground leak.

For some mysterious reason the Texas Railroad Commission oversees gas drilling operations.

Waste water from the drilling operations is stored in underground wells. The waste water contains salt, drilling chemicals, drilling mud and crude oil.

CES Saltwater Disposal was given a permit in May of 2007 to drill to a depth of 11,500 feet to pump waste water underground at the now shut down location near Aledo.

The shutdown disposal operation is near a housing development which gets its water from underground wells.

Why these people here in Texas, who rely so much on underground aquifers, would allow contaminated water to be pumped into wells, seems bizarre to me. Up in Washington state there is a serious problem with nuclear wastes at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation slowly migrating towards the Columbia River.

Why do these people here think that contaminated water underground is going to stay put? I see bad things in the future that are only being hinted at in the present. As in MAJOR ECOLOGICAL DISASTER.

Earthquake Shakes North Texas! Is Gas Drilling The Cause?

I thought Texas did not have earthquakes. I've been told that more than once. Where I used to live, in Washington, earthquakes were quite regular. That and mountains blowing up.

Where I lived, in Mount Vernon, we went through a series of localized earthquakes centered about 3 miles east of my house. It was day after day of quakes. I remember laying on my waterbed when one happened and the waves about tossed me out of bed. Another one I was sitting in my living room and I thought the windows were going to pop out. Another one I heard loud cracking and went into the kitchen to find a fault line had formed across my tile floor.

So, I thought my earthquake days were behind me. But then last night, coming up on midnight, we got hit with a series of quakes here in North Texas. The first struck about a half hour before midnight, centered 4 miles north of Grand Prairie. Grand Prairie is the town next to Arlington. I live in East Fort Worth, about 10 miles west of Grand Prairie. I think I felt the quake but thought it was a noisy truck.

The largest quake occurred just after midnight. A 3.0 centered 4 miles southwest of Irving. Irving is the town due west of Dallas where the Cowboys currently play football.

Several smaller quakes in the 2.0 range were felt, with the last shaker occurring around 3 in the morning.

Police were flooded with 100s of calls. Most people thought it was an explosion or a plane crash.

I remember when all this Barnett Shale drilling and fraccing started happening I thought to myself, good thing they don't have quakes here, as doing that much damage to the earth's upper crust would likely have a bad result up in Washington.

The same thought occurred to Fort Worth's wise sage, Don Young. Way back in August of 2007 Don Young wrote the following....

While vacationing recently in Marfa, Texas, I stumbled into a bookstore seeking shade and ran across an interesting book titled, Texas Earthquakes.

I thought to myself, We don't have earthquakes in Texas! The concept seemed counterintuitive. The authors of the book know better. Opening the book at random to page 70, I read the following:

"Three human activities that commonly induce earthquake activity are:

1) Injecting high pressure fluids into rock formations beneath the earth's surface.
2) Withdrawing large amounts of fluid or gas.
3) Construction of reservoirs and lakes."

Until very recently, the first 2 items have occurred only in remote parts of the state, away from densely populated areas. The Barnett-Shale play and subsequent fracing technology have changed all that.

According to the Texas Railroad Commission, in the year 2000, there were less than 10 gas wells in Tarrant County. Today, there are more than 1,000 with many more planned and thousands more in the immediate vicinity.

I'm not suggesting there is a serious risk from earthquakes in Tarrant County, there are far more serious risks from drilling, but, expanded gas drilling and injection wells in the north Texas region have moved us into uncharted territory.

To paraphrase Paul Harvey, "One fine day we may know, the rest of the story."

I fear we are doomed here in North Texas, doomed I tell you.

AT & T U-Verse Email Sending Solution

I keep seeing that people are coming to my blog looking for answers regarding how to send email using an existing email account with their new AT & T connection.

It wasn't easy, but I figured it out. No help from AT &T. I'd intended to post the solution, but I forgot.

There are several steps. I use Outlook Express. You may use a different email program that may require a different solution.

First off, log into your AT & T account. Find your way to your email account.

Click on 'options'. You'll see it on the upper right.

Now click on 'Mail Addresses' under the 'Management' heading.

Now click on 'Add'. Then enter the email address you want to be able to use as a sending email address. You will be sent an email to verify this address.

Now, back at Outlook Express. Click on 'tools', then 'accounts', then the email address you want to use and click 'Properties'.

Under the 'Servers' tab you'll need to make your Outgoing mail (SMTP) "smtp.att.yahoo.com".

At the bottom of the 'Servers' section check off "My server requires authentication".

Then click 'Settings'. Under Settings select 'Log on using'. Then enter your AT & T email address as the 'Account Name'. Enter your AT & T password in the 'Password' field. Click 'OK' and get outta there.

Now, click on the 'Advanced' tab. For 'Outgoing mail (SMTP) enter '465'. Put a check mark underneath that where it says 'This server requires a secure connection (SSL).

Hit 'OK' and you're done. You should now be able to send email using a non AT & T email address.

I know it sounds like an awful lot of bother. And it is a bother that AT & T should not make us go through. But it doesn't really take all that long. And after you get it done it works just fine.

Happy Texas Halloween

My Halloween started with a scary early morning swim. At midnight the temperature was 65. By this morning it'd gotten down to 59. The pool was warmer than yesterday so I lasted longer in it before frostbite began to work its magic on my extremities.

I don't get any trick or treaters here. Benefit of being behind a security gate. When I lived in Washington I'd get a lot of the little beggars. I don't miss them.

I think I may spend Halloween evening over on the balcony of Miss Puerto Rico where I'll have a bird's eye view of Halloween.

Do you like my Halloween costume? I am Leatherface of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame. I haven't found a chainsaw yet. I think Miss Puerto Rico has one.

Obama the Socialist Communist Dictator Wannabe

The right wing wackos are starting to get scary in their desperate fear that they are about to lose the Presidential election. After the Fort Worth Star-Telegram endorsed Obama the paper been printing a lot of really scary letters to the editor from those convinced Obama is a Socialist, Communist, Muslim Terrorist.

I tell you, this is what our inept education system produces. A lot of erroneous thinking. I'd willingly wager the vast majority of the wackos could not coherently tell you what socialism is. Or communism.

I printed some of the scary Star-Telegram letters yesterday. There were quite a few more today. Plus a few reasonable sounding ones. One of the letter writers blamed this oddball opinion flood, that borders on hate speak, on the propaganda job being spewed on talk radio and Fox News. I can see why one might think that, because I thought the same thing, in that many of the letters seem to reflect the type overwrought nonsense I've been hearing on Rush Limbaugh.

It's riling up the nutcases, as witnessed by the letters and by an incident like the pair of Neo-Nazis being arrested due to their plot to kill dozens of blacks and assassinate Obama. The right wing media is engaging in the most shamefully irresponsible disservice to our country I've yet witnessed by those who should know and behave better.

Just take a look at today's Rush In A Hurray email newsletter that came in minutes ago....

On Today’s Show...

Obama's infomercial painted the image of an America so horrible, large people have to cut back on...snacks for their children. People actually get arthritis, too! This is not the real America. It's just people with tough times.

The Obama crowds seek a redeemer in a time of turmoil. It's not what he says, it's how he says it.

Pearl of Wisdom: "This Obama infomercial was a parade of victims. I feel sorry for these people waiting around for him to save them. This wasn't inspiring. There wasn't one example of Obama's leadership. He's a cold, angry, charismatic demagogue. It was like watching 30 minutes of one-minute campaign ads. Would you do that?"

Obama calls America selfish, and thinks "charity" is government taking your money to "be our brother's keeper." Hey, you have a brother subsisting in a hut, and your beloved aunt living in a Boston slum!

Obama's media manipulation tactics exposed in a pro-Hillary blog post? Could be.

Pearl of Wisdom: "Jack Welch was on CNBC with Larry Kudlow and Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. He was on fire about the truth of economics and the Barack plan."

Rush's Gut, Daily Tracking: It's hard to know what to call, when the press is so bias.

Pearl of Wisdom: "When you have an Obama advisor saying that Obama is not a black guy -- he's half white, and that's why Americans will vote for him -- and you have Obama making a joke about it on TV, it's all strategic. It's not just a joke, at all."

A Democrat caller for McCain. He's one of many.

Focus, you people. Step #1: Drag McCain over the finish line. Step #2: Rebuild the conservative movement. If you have to, tell yourself you're voting for Sarah Palin.

Pearl of Wisdom: "We've had over 3-1/2 times the polls this October as in October of 2004. It's information overload! We're being swamped with this tainted stuff."

Chesapeake Energy's Tandy Hills Obscene Gesture

In the above satelite view of the Tandy Hills Natural Area you can see some of the trails on the Tandy Hills, plus the location of the Chesapeake Energy drilling site and the location of the Mother Nature piece of guerrilla artwork I've made mention of before.

As my longtime reader may have noticed I go to the Tandy Hills and go hiking a couple times a week, weather permitting and it usually is.

But, before I talk about that I must digress and inform you that after two days of way too chilly I got back in the pool this morning. It was bracing, but I swam for at least 10 minutes. It was 55 this morning when I went swimming.

By the time I got to the Tandy Hills it was hot enough to overheat and require the removal of some clothing. I was not long into today's hiking when I saw that an unwelcome visitor had been erected since Monday, as in the Chesapeake Energy drill site's drilling tower was now in place and though I don't think they've begun drilling something was making an awful racket.

You can see and hear the Chesapeake operation all over the Tandy Hills. In the photos it looked to me as if Chesapeake Energy was engaging in an obscene gesture, directed at the skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth. That would seem to be a perfect visual metaphor for Chesapeake Energy and its CEO, Aubrey McClendon and how they and he run roughshod over people, towns and basketball teams.