Bushland Texas El Paso Natural Gas Pipeline Explosion Near Amarillo

A natural gas pipeline owned by El Paso Natural Gas exploded yesterday in Bushland, Texas, sending flames 100s of feet in the air. Three people were injured, homes were shaken, window blinds melted.

The pipeline exploded around 1am in the little town off Interstate 40 about 15 miles west of Amarillo.

Potter County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Roger Short said he could see the flames and hear the roar from his home 20 miles away.

Residents were evacuated. One house was destroyed with several others badly damaged. Firefighters had the flames mostly under control by 5:30am, with small grass fires continuing to burn.

Of the three injured one was in satisfactory condition in an Amarillo hospital, one was treated and released and one was transferred to a Lubbock hospital burn center.

Okay, Chesapeake Energy, tell us again why those people on Carter Avenue in Fort Worth should have no worries about what you want to do under their homes.

Stuck In The Mud With Rachel & Rescued By Kid Durango In Durango Texas

That is a car in the Texas town named after me. Durango.

A few days ago Moby Dick sent me an email asking me about Durango, Texas.

Last night Rachel sent me an email asking me if I could tell her how to contact Moby Dick, saying "I am looking for any breathing, upright (even that's negotiable) Durango, TX citizen or really anyone at all associated with this town. Found you in a google search (obviously) and as you know, information on this place is slim pickin's. I'm trying to find a kid in Durango who saved my life last week in, of course, Durango. All I got was his first name."

I then asked Rachel for details of how a Durango kid, let's call him Kid Durango, saved her life.

Rachel then directed me to her blog, where her Durango ordeal is told in 2 parts.

Short version, Rachel was taking the scenic route home to Dallas after attending a wedding in Austin at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Rachel was driving along, saw a sign indicating she was in Durango. Pulled over to look at a map. Got stuck in mud.

A mild panic ensued. Rachel called her mom and dad, seeking advice. Then Rachel's cell phone went dead. After I don't know how much time Kid Durango showed up. Driving a jeep with a wench. He pulled Rachel's Honda Civic out of the mire.

As this was happening Rachel's cell phone came back to life with a call from mom and dad. Rachel told them her current status which had mom screaming for her to get Kid Durango's license plate number. Apparently Rachel and her mom live in morbid fear of being random roadkill.

Back mobile again Rachel shouted out her profound thanks to Kid Durango and asked him what his name was. Brett was the answer. And now Rachel is seeking the full name of Kid Durango. I doubt Moby Dick is going to be any help. Both he and Rachel live in Dallas.

So, anyone from my favorite Texas town reading this who knows Brett, please help Rachel with her "What's Brett's Last Name" project. Thanks.

Another Bad Day In Texas In Durango Computer World

I believe the red you see in the picture is called Sumac. It was coloring up the Tandy Hills today.

Speaking of today, I am having myself a day today. My one longtime reader may remember my recent trauma over websites being hacked, which ended up with me moving my websites to a new server.

I have not gone a long enough time, trouble free, to feel safe. Yesterday I learned one of my websites was generating a dire warning. Worse than anything previous. The warning is coming from anti-virus programs, like Avast and Norton.

About a half hour before I was scheduled to take off for the Tandy Hills I discovered what I thought was a huge security hole in the permissions settings on my websites. I started changing the settings, then thought I needed to walk away and think it through. It's a good thing I did that, because the permissions were set correctly and the changes I was making was causing access to be denied. I was back here about 1.5 hours later and quickly fixed that problem. It being a problem that I had created.

But, I still had that other website generating the dire warning. From Norton I learned the precise location and name of the offending file. But that folder and file no longer exists. It was deleted on the old server.

So, I'm thinking this is some legacy woe that is somehow causing this one domain to be still flagged as a problem. Norton has a thing where you can request a review if it is your website and you know it is problem free. I had to create an account first. No big deal. I had to verify site ownership by placing code from Norton in the root directory. Again, no big deal.

But. The Norton instructions were very bad. Norton told me to place a line of code,

"wiye0k1nf3iakqnwf5djo6f7k9eqj74vf3n2mbh8w0z3m1906izjjqcuowlgz5x-kznkn8wj3suia8r5vlkokpd-yg45fn2cbkjza01zc38el7j6orsxk5h5jeo-d85a",

in the root directory.

Well, I've traveled this road before. You can't just put code randomly in a directory. So, I made it both an HTML file and a .txt file and named it what Norton called it. Which was nortonsw_a0c259d0-ac7c-0.html.txt, removing the .txt for the .html verson.

Uploaded the file. Clicked on the "verify" button. Got told verification failed. 10 minutes later I get an email from Norton, with the email now step by step explaining what I already knew to do, correctly, and had already done, correctly. Only to fail.

So, I tried again, in the oft chance I'd somehow mis-copied something. Failure again.

This had me remembering why I long ago bailed using Norton's Anti-Virus software. Norton programs are worse than getting a virus.

The Texas Blahs Caused By Twitter & Barnett Shale Gas Drilling Pollution

It is a beautiful blue sky day, 72 degrees HOT, windows open, here in the little Texas burg that calls itself Fort Worth.

I should be in a good mood, all things considered. Instead I have an overarching case of the BLAHs.

I believed this case of the BLAHs was brought on by spending too much time with Twitter the past 3 days. I have been in experimenting mode with Twitter, to see if I really could make use of it.

This morning I pretty much decided, for the most part, that Twitter is useless. Or maybe my limited comprehension abilities render it impossible for me to make use of what may actually be useful about Twitter.

One of my Tarrant County co-horts is off on a secret mission this morning. I know no details, except it is a secret mission. This is not the first secret mission she has gone on. I hope it's not some sort of eco-terrorist thing. Then again, Texas could use a little eco-terrorism. There are way too many evil-doers getting away with doing dirty deeds here.

Wyatt Earp needs to come to town and bring law and order with him.

Arresting Fort Worth's Mayor Mike Moncrief would probably be a good start. I keep thinking the feds are going to arrest the man and charge him with racketeering, or whatever the proper charge is for benefiting monetarily from decisions made due to your political position. I don't see what the difference is between accepting bribes, for favors done, and having vested interests in the Barnett Shale natural gas drilling companies, giving the mayor a motivation to agree to every fool thing the gas drillers ask for.

You want the drilling distance restriction reduced? No problem. You can drill 300 feet from someone's house. You need water? No problem. Just stick a pipeline anywhere you want. You say it'd cost too much to put vapor containment equipment on the drilling sites? No problem, we can live with a little air pollution, no matter how bad study after study indicates it is. You want to run a pipeline under Fort Worth citizen's homes and pump non-odorized gas. Not a problem. We'll help you get the job done by using eminent domain, if that helps.

Maybe I am feeling BLAH due to the air that I breathe. The windows are open. I'm about 600 feet from a Barnett Shale natural gas well. It's either Twitter or the Barnett Shale that is making me BLAH. Maybe a combo of both.

News From Texas That Mount Rainier Put On A Flying Saucer Show Last Friday

I just got an interesting email from the Songbird of the Texas Gulf Coast, Alma, down in Port Aransas, sending me pictures of some cool-looking cloud formations that swirled above Mount Rainier in my old state of residence, that being Washington, supposedly this past Friday.

Drivers were pulling to the side of Interstate 5 to take pictures.

Way back on June 24, 1947 a pilot named Kenneth A. Arnold coined the term "flying saucer" to describe 9 unusual objects he observed flying in a chain near Mount Rainier, heading towards Mount Adams at what amounted to supersonic speeds at a time in history when no earthly planes had broken the sound barrier.

After he described the flying object's shape as looking like a flat saucer or disc and described their motion as being like that of a saucer skipping across water the press quickly grabbed hold of the term "flying saucer," many of which were reported being seen in the following days.

This singular event ignited the UFO phenomenon that continues off and on to this day, as in last winter, or was it the winter before, there was a UFO widely reported to have been seen down by Stephenville, here in Texas.

Arnold's account was found to be highly credible. And then it was corroborated by others who had witnessed the same thing and were equally credible. In the days that followed numerous other credible witnesses described seeing stuff in the sky over Washington they'd not seen before. And then on Day 10 came a primary corroborative sighting, this time by a United Airlines crew over Idaho on their way to Seattle who saw disk-like objects pacing their plane.

The next day Arnold met with the pilot, Captain, E. J. Smith, and co-pilot, to compare the details of what they saw. Within days there were sightings over Tulsa, Oklahoma and Phoenix, Arizona.

The last photo of flying saucer like clouds swirling around Mount Rainier is the view from Gig Harbor. Gig Harbor is on the Olympic Peninsula on the other side of the Narrows from Tacoma, accessed by parallel suspension bridges.

These spectacular cloud formations are called lenticular clouds. They occur when the air flow over Mount Rainier hits a precise condition where the air gets pushed up, then cools and condenses into clouds. A moist onshore flow preceding an incoming rainstorm sets up the conditions that makes these clouds.

Proposition 11 Wins Slight Victory For Foes Of Eminent Domain Abuse In Texas

There was an election yesterday in Texas, just like there was in most of the rest of America. In Texas we had several Propositions to vote on. All passed.

Including Proposition 11 which alters the Texas state constitution to make it more difficult for local governments to use eminent domain to seize private property to give to a private developer.

The Texas state-wide revulsion to outrageous cases of eminent domain abuse has been fueled by what was done to hundreds of citizens in Arlington so the Dallas Cowboys could have a place to build a football stadium. This is widely believed to be the worst case of eminent domain abuse in American history.

In North Texas we also have had a lot of people annoyed by how the Barnett Shale gas drilling industry has run roughshod over property owners, particularly what has happened in Dish, Texas, with landowners losing large slices of their property to pipelines, effectively destroying the value of their land.

Of yesterday's Proposition 11 approval, Texas Governor Perry said, "The voters of Texas have sent a clear message: Don't mess with private property rights."

Texas Farm Bureau President Kenneth Dierschke said passing the Proposition was an important, but incomplete, victory. Dierschke says the Texas eminent domain laws still favor the condemner of property.

The founder and director of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF) said, "Texans sent a strong message with their vote that they want eminent domain reform, but Proposition 11 did not get the job done."

Well, Proposition 11 certainly came along 5 years too late to stop Jerry Jones and the City of Arlington from committing the worst case of eminent domain abuse in American history. But I think Proposition 11 would stop Jerry now. That and the fact that the City of Arlington has told Jerry Jones there will be no more abuse of eminent domain in Jones' quest to build more parking lots.

Bill Gates & His Microsoft Minions Took Over My Computer Last Night

When I woke my computer up this morning I was not happy to see that none of the programs I'd left running were still running. I could tell the computer had been re-started because the WeatherBug window was open, which it always is on a re-start, til I close it.

Then a little message balloon popped up telling me that critical security updates had been installed which required the computer to be re-started. I clicked on the balloon to see what these updates were, but the balloon went away without telling me.

The normal procedure for Windows XP updates is I'm told they've been downloaded and are ready to install. I then hit the install now button.

Usually the critical Microsoft Windows XP security updates say something like an issue has been discovered that could allow someone to take over your computer, this update fixes that issue. It's worded totally different than that, but I've got the drift of the message right.

I find it very ironic that the only entity I am aware of that takes over my computer, without my permission, is Microsoft. Isn't this some sort of crime? Or should be. I think Bill Gates needs to do some hard time behind bars again.

We Are Busy Getting Drunk At The Durangrilla Bar In Durango Texas Tonight

There is a town in Texas, down Waco way, called Durango. I did not know there was a Durango, Texas when I moved to Texas. My Internet nickname was Durango long before Texas came across my radar screen.

I just got an email from Moby Dick, who says he, or she, is a "traveler who likes to explore Texas."

Miss or Mr. Dick asked me, "Are you from Durango, TX? Do you live in Durango, TX? Have you been to the Durangrilla Bar in Durango?"

I answered "NO" to all 3 of Moby Dick's questions.

When I learned there was a town in Texas named after me I had to go check it out, and so I did. And then I made a webpage about it. I had not thought to look, for quite some time, but I just Googled "Durango Texas" and was appalled to see my webstuff overwhelms the actual town of Durango. I guess this explains why I get questions like "Do Harriet McBee still live in Durango?"

I barely hit the publish post button when I heard back from Moby Dick. Here is what he/she said (I don't think he/she has seen the blog, so he/she is unaware of the gender confusion)

I checked out your web page....so here's an update.

A buddy of mine owns some property about 3 miles away from Durango (we both live in Dallas) so when we take the boys down to camp at his farm, we always eat at what is now known as "Durangril-la" ( I guess a bad play on Shangrilla) but it's the same place as the Durango Inn you show in your web page. They actually have a damn good hamburger and, of course, ice cold beer. One of the best things on the menu (you should make another trip) are the "white wings". These are a small chicken breast strip wrapped around a jalapeno pepper and that whole thing is wrapped in bacon and deep fried. They are about the size of a billiard ball, maybe slightly smaller. Damn, those are good! Happy travels.

The Bluest Skies I've Ever Seen Are In Texas At Fosdic Lake In Fort Worth

I used to think the bluest skies I've ever seen were in Seattle, with the hills the greenest green, but today I'm thinking Texas is being bluer and greener than Seattle. It is definitely warmer and less cloudy.

I stayed in the pool for a long time this morning. The water did not feel as if it had been heated up all that much from yesterday's 75 degrees. It's that warm out there again, today, at 1pm. Windows open.

My power bill was only $18.92 last month. I think something must be wrong with the meter.

I spent all morning in Twitterland, ignoring my blogging duties, well, sort of ignoring them. At noon I had to get out of here. So I did. I went to Oakland Lake Park to walk around Fosdic Lake. No matter how many times I've walked around Fosdic Lake I've never found Oakland Lake. There really aren't a lot of places it could be hiding.

Now, you had to admit, don't you, Fosdic Lake is one serene looking lake. With no wind ruffling its surface, today Fosdic Lake was like a mirror. I didn't need to tell you that, you can see it yourself in the picture above.

The temperature was being so perfect the Fosdic Lake turtles were having themselves a real fine time basking in the sun. I'd never seen so many of them lined up on one log. And today they weren't being all jittery when I stood there taking pictures of them. Only a couple of the turtles jumped in the water. Usually they all bail ship, one by one.

The Tandy Hills Have Dried Out Somewhat From The October Texas Deluges

Today was the first I've been to the Tandy Hills Natural Sanatorium Area in weeks, due to the deluges of October.

The endorphins released by hill hiking have greatly improved my dire outlook.

Fall has fallen harder since the last time I saw the foliage on the hills.

The hills were still a bit wet, but I had no mud issues. I did have an issue where I was chased by a pack of 3 dogs. They probably just wanted to be petted.

I tried to find the Witchey Tree and the Death Van to no avail. I followed what I thought the van's course was, took a left and headed west at the point where I thought the driver would have lost control and careened down the steep ravine. But, I found no Witchey Tree or Death Van. I did get bit by some bugs. That rarely happens to me.

It is day 2 of November and there are still wildflowers coloring up the Tandy Hills. I don't remember when the first freeze happens here in Texas.

I heard from one of my Washington corespondents this morning. She was east of the mountains, that is Washington speak, meaning she was east of the Cascade Mountains, in the Tri-Cities, where she said it was 27 this morning. I'm at 75 right now at 2 in the afternoon in Fort Worth.

The pool should be a pleasant temperature tomorrow morning.