A Sunday Morning Glass Cactus Texas Headache

I am not a night owl. Night owling is so rare for me I can remember the precise date of the previous instance, that being December 5, 2008, when I did not get home til past 2 in the morning.

Last night I got home this morning, at around 1.

I had a sleep walking incident around 4. Apparently I wanted to go swimming. I made it partway to the pool when I became aware I was walking around wearing nothing but a stocking cap. I made it safely back to bed.

So, I had myself a wild night at the Glass Cactus at Gaylord Texan with Gar the Texan and the Queen of Wink and others. The Queen was more regal than I thought she'd be. Gar the Texan did not have any case of the vapors attacks. I'd not seen Gar the Texan in awhile. He's put on a few pounds, which has him looking healthier than when last I saw him. The Queen is quite the conversationalist and is a bit too quick with the wit for me to keep up with.

Summed up. I don't like waking up with a headache. No matter what the cause.

My Google Nightmare Is Over, Let's Go To The Glass Cactus At Gaylord Texan Tonight

It has stressed me out all day, this Saturday, having my main website suddenly a rogue menace, flagged by Google as a danger to the world.

I have fussed with this all day. Why I get so overwrought over such things perplexes me. But it's the way I am. Maybe it is because it feels so good when it all gets fixed.

Which it now is. Google is no longer warning people that I am a dangerous terrorist about to explode their entire world.

I am grateful that I am now back in the good graces of humanity.

In the midst of my stress I got an email from Gar the Texan, wanting my help with entertaining the Queen of Wink, in town to see her first waterfall and gawk at ancient hair bands. I'd not looked at my phone in awhile. I see that Gar the Texan also called me. He did not leave a message. Had he left a message I likely would have returned the call.

Gar the Texan's dilemma was trying to figure out how to properly entertain a Wink Queen. I know this would daunt me. What a challenge. It seemed Gar's two options were the Dallas West End entertainment district or Fort Worth's downtown. Neither all that entertaining to me.

So. I suggested that Gar take the Queen up to Grapevine, to Gaylord Texan and the Glass Cactus. Trust me, this is a suitable venue for the Queen of Wink. The photo at the top should ice the deal.

Hiking Tandy With Google Gunk On My Brain

Are there few things sadder than an empty swing? Right now I can think of dozens and they all involve me and this hell I'm living.

The empty swings are located at the civilized part of the Tandy Hills Natural Area, well, I guess it'd be more accurate to say the empty swings sit outside the Natural Area.

Google continues to have my Eyes on Texas website generating malware warning messages. On all of the hundreds of pages. Go here and you'll see what Google is doing to me. This morning Google told me they'd determined my website was clean of danger and the warnings were being taken off. But that it could take awhile.

Meanwhile, I learned from Twister that he'd gone to my website at some point recently and it set off his anti-virus program. My therapist, Dr. L.C. told me about the Google warning, but I made no note of it, just figured it was some random thing. I just learned from my therapist that this could have been up to 2 weeks ago that she warned me.

I'm assuming this will all sort itself out. But I did not need this aggravation.

Hiking the humid Tandy Hills helped a bit. My early morning swim came before I'd learned what Google had done to me. The Tandy Hills were pretty much dried out from yesterday morning's deluge, except for that humidity residue.

I called my sister in Phoenix while sitting in the shade of a tree, by that swing with no one swinging. She was my first live opportunity to vent regarding my Google trauma. I called Tootsie Tonasket first, but she wasn't answering. It is monsoon season in Phoenix. They got hit with one yesterday, just like we did here, only in Texas we don't call it a monsoon. So the Phoenix temps were 20 degrees lower than pre-monsoon, but now with extreme humidity. And a lot of mud.

I continued talking to my sister while I drove to Town Talk. I don't think I remembered to put on my seatbelt. At Town Talk I got some cheese, peanut butter, cinnamon, spinach and raspberries. The raspberries were in a semi-large plastic carton, 12 ounces for $1.59.

A little over a year ago at the Fremont Sunday Market, in Seattle, I got 3 large flats of organic raspberries. For free. 2 of the flats made it to my mom and dad's raspberry canning operation. The third flat went to waste in a fat pig's refrigerator. Despite not wanting to, I had to let that third flat go. I don't like getting into a fight with a demanding fat pig. One could get squished.

Google Is Harming My Computer

I've had a bad bad thing happen. This morning I checked on my Google Webmaster Tools to see a big warning in red, "This site may be distributing malware."

I then Googled a search string that brings up the affected website to see that searchers were being warned that, "This site may harm your computer."

Clicking on the link brought up another warning that sounded dire.

In the Webmaster Tools, under the warning in red it said, "Status of the latest badware review for this site: A review for this site has finished. The site was found clean. The badware warnings from web search are being removed. Please note that it can take some time for this change to propagate."

So far the "badware" warnings are still there. I have been wondering why I've had a big drop in website visitors of late. Usually about 80% of searchers come to the website via Google, followed by Yahoo and Bing. Currently most are coming from Yahoo, then Bing, with Google trailing.

I don't know how long this warning has been scaring people off my harmless website. It seems like recently someone said something about seeing a warning. And someone on Facebook said clicking on a link to a photo brought up a "pollutant" warning.

I looked at the source code for 6 webpages the Webmaster Tools pointed me to. Each had a line of code that I had not inserted. The code is:

Now this is interesting, earlier I'd copied and pasted the troubling code in this spot. Hours later I look at the blog and see white space where that code had been. This must seem some dire, evil code to be removed mysteriously.

I have no idea what megastatistic is, but Googling it I found that Google does not like it. I have now removed that code. I hope I found all the instances of it.

During the course of trying to figure out what has gone wrong and fix it, I learned that on January 31, of this year, Google had a malfunction that put the "This site may be distributing malware" warning on every link on their search engine, world-wide, including Google's own webpages. This was quickly fixed.

I have no idea how much AdSense revenue I've lost due to this. For the past several days I have noticed a decline.

Anyway, very frustrating day. I hate stuff like this.

Seeing Birds and Fort Worth Mounted Policewomen

For weeks now I have been seeing Fort Worth Mounted Policewomen patrolling my neighborhood. I did not get a good photo opportunity until today.

Usually it is a solo cop on her steed that I see, a few times it has been a pair of lady mounted cops.

I have no idea what the purpose of doing this is. I see where they park the big horse trailer the horses are hauled in. Keeping horses is expensive. I know this from personal experience. Fort Worth has a lot of budget woes. The city cut back on library hours. Yet can somehow pay for horsebound cops.

I came upon the Mounted Policewoman today at a stoplight on Woodhaven Boulevard. The horse had the right of way. This gave me an opportunity to get out my camera. That is the picture to the right, taken as she slowly ambled down the street.

The cop and the horse presented a bit of a road hazard, walking slowly, basically blocking a lane. I think I mentioned, previously, that in recent times I was stopped by one of the Fort Worth Gestapo, because I was driving too slow in a quiet residential neighborhood and did not have my seatbelt on.

Well, the Fort Worth Mounted Policewoman was moving slow, on a busy street, not a quiet residential neighborhood. The Policewoman was not wearing a seatbelt. Or a helmet. I know a citizen can make a citizen's arrest. Can a citizen give a cop a citizen's ticket?

To take the picture at the top, I'd passed the mounted cop and looped back around her to take that picture, as she took a left, without signaling, nearly having a head-on collision, clearly illustrated in the photo. I was appalled at the disdain for public safety so wantonly on display.

After I was finished with photo documenting this latest Fort Worth police outrageous behavior I continued on my way to Oakland Lake Park to partake in some high humidity hiking. The temperate was a very pleasant low 80s, but this morning's rain had amped up the humidity.

There are a lot of waterfowl on Oakland Lake. Ducks and geese and others alien to me. People have fun feeding the birds. The birds get used to getting fed. Today I stopped to look at the birds and the pair in the picture were sure I was going to feed them something. They made a bee-line towards me. As I got out the camera, apologizing to them for my lack of food, they figured out I was not reaching in my pocket for food and turned their backs on me and waddled away, making scornful noises as they waddled. I'll try and remember to bring them something to eat next time I visit their home.

I Did Not Get Struck By Lightning While Swimming This Morning

A cold front was supposed to bring me a storm last night. That didn't happen. But, this morning the cold front has arrived. It is only 69 out there at half past 8 in the morning.

On my way down to the pool, a little before the crack of dawn, I thought I saw flashes in the distance. But I heard no rumbling. And it was not very cloudy.

I was about 10 minutes into the pool when dawn began to reverse itself with the sky growing dark. Then it got very windy. Still, no visible lightning, no thunder. Then the power went out, making it suddenly darker and a lot quieter, due to the lack of power shutting off the noisy fountain and waterfall.

About 15 minutes after the power went out the storm moved into my neighborhood. The lightning strikes were still about 5 miles away, but I started to think maybe it was time to get out of the water. I've been wary of combining water with lightning ever since I saw a building burn due to a lightning strike a few weeks ago.

So, I got out of the water. The power came back on at the same time the lightning was directly overhead. That seemed odd. One strike was earth shakingly close.

The National Weather Service has issued a Flood Watch Alert. I suspect this may have some flood weary Haltom City people staying home to keep an eye on their creeks.

A Visit To My Wal-Mart McDonald's Car Crash Site

The entry to the Wal-Mart I frequent most frequently was barricaded with upside down grocery carts as the first line of defense, with bundled up cardboard as the second line of defense.

I blogged 2 bloggings ago that a car had attacked my neighborhood Wal-Mart this morning, smashing through the doors in a hurry to get to the McDonald's inside.

From the outside I could not figure out how the car got inside. The doors looked completely intact. I asked the Wal-Mart worker who was stacking bananas if he was in the store when the car crashed in. He said he was. I asked how the car got in, because the doors were intact. He did not know. I told him the Star-Telegram article said much chaos ensued. I asked what the chaos was like. He said there were people running all over and yelling. And that it was real loud.

The interior barricade to keep you out of the crime scene was a string of those orange cone like things Wal-Mart puts on the floor when the roof leaks or someone spells something, plus a shopping cart or two with signs taped on saying, "No Customers Beyond This Area Thank You".

I got my goods and found a check-out. My usual self check-outs were not working due to being in the crime scene area.

I asked the lady checking me out if she was in the store when the car came inside. She said she was. I mentioned the chaos and asked her to describe it. She said it was very loud, with people running and yelling for people to get out of the store. So, she and others ran outside. There she saw police trying to handle the guy who had done the damage. She said he was Asian, small, acting crazy and doing Karate moves on the police. I have trouble understanding the local dialect's version of English, sometimes, but I think she said the guy was running around the parking lot before police could catch him.

I asked her about the doors, asking how did the car get in without breaking the doors? She said the doors were totally destroyed, but that they had someone fixing them right away with new doors. So, that mystery was solved. Yet, strangely, as you can see in the picture, the doors do not look destroyed. And yet the car is inside, trying to make his own McDonald's drive-through.

Incoming Texas Cold Front & The Tandy Tent

The headline is "Cold front may bring severe storms to North Texas".

This from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The first paragraph says:

"A cold front is heading our way, bringing with it the possibility of strong to severe thunderstorms tonight."

Reading on, I learned this "cold" front may drop temperatures a whopping 4 to 5 degrees, creating a daytime high of around 94 degrees, which is normal for this time of year.

I guess the air-conditioning will still be running tonight, despite this frigid cold front.

A day or two ago someone commented, regarding me, on Facebook, saying that, "Even though you are bald, old and fat, none of that matters. Because you've got a good heart and personality." To which someone else said, "He may be bald and old, but he is not fat. He's an exercise fanatic".

I did not mind someone saying I was bald, old and fat, because they said it in a very nice way. But, calling me an exercise fanatic? That is just inappropriately rude.

If I were a fanatic I would have gone swimming this morning. But, I did not. But, by noon I was feeling withdrawal pains from no endorphins. So, I went to the Tandy Hills Natural Sanatorium Homeless Shelter Area to go on a long, vigorous, mind-clearing hike up and down the hills in the mid-day heat. Does that sound fanatical to you?

Man Drives Car Into My East Fort Worth Wal-Mart Supercenter

Earlier today I blogged about yesterday's Arlington traffic jam that did not happen. I mentioned looking in both the Dallas and Fort Worth newspapers thinking I'd find a followup article about the results of yesterday's first dual event.

A short time after I posted that, Anonymous sent me a comment including the article about the lack of a traffic jam that he/she found, but I could not find. Anonymous suggested that perhaps the Star-Telegram ran the no traffic jam article after reading me complain about the lack of a follow up.

So, I went back to the Star-Telegram, online, to find that article. I still could not find it. But I did see an intriguing new headline, "Chaos ensues as man drives car into Walmart, tries to flee". I was curious where this Walmart is. Texas? Elsewhere? So, I clicked on the link.

After I clicked, the actual headline, above the article was, "Chaos ensues as man drives car into Fort Worth Walmart, tries to flee". So, now I knew it was local chaos. By the first paragraph and the mention of east Fort Worth, the chaos got closer.

This afternoon I plan to go to my nearest Wal-Mart Supercenter. Well, imagine my surprise. It's the one that got hit! The Eastchase Wal-Mart. The Walmart greeter got hurt, but not seriously. The Walmart greeters at that particular entry are always such nice greeters.

Important Update: I have now found that illusive article about the lack of a traffic jam yesterday. That posting time says 12:36 pm. I was looking for it before 8 am. But Anonymous found it and sent it to me before noon. It's perplexing.

Dallas Cowboy Stadium Paul McCartney Concert

Unless I missed it there was absolutely no follow-up in either the Dallas Morning News or the Fort Worth Star-Telegram regarding the traffic situation during yesterday's first experience with events taking place at the same time at the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium and the Ballpark in Arlington.

My research assistant, L.C., reported this morning that the Dallas ABC affiliate, WFAA Channel 8 News, said Paul McCartney fans were kept waiting outside the stadium for 40 minutes, in the extreme heat, because the concert sound check was taking more time than expected. At least 10 line-waiting concert-goers were treated for heat exhaustion.

Both local newspapers gave rave reviews to the McCartney concert.

But, back to the sun stroking. I'd not thought about it before, but there is absolutely no shade outside that new stadium. Both ends of the stadium have plazas where people are expected to pay to be able to stand near the game, though not actually watching it. With no shade. What if it rains?

Methinks a quick solution to this lack of shade problem needs to be implemented. I like being out in the HEAT. But I can not stand standing in the HEAT. I have to keep moving. Waiting in a line in the HEAT would be something I would not long suffer. It's be as bad as being stuck on the tarmac in a plane for an hour. Or two.