Texas Wind Chime Noise Pollution

UPDATE: I've been scrolling through old bloggings, looking at the ones that have accumulated a lot of comments and re-posting if I think the comments are funny or good or both funny and good. The comments about Wind Chime Pollution are funny and good...

I hate wind chimes. I think they are a public nuisance. I think anyone who would hang a wind chime outside their abode is a public nuisance. I am not alone. If you Google "wind chime complaints" you will see that wind chimes annoy people all over the world.

Some towns have ordinances to control how wind chimes can be used, how loud, how many and how close to a neighbor.

Humans have different tolerance levels for annoying noise. Some people are not bothered by noise, others are. I happen to be one who is. I think someone else's right to a noise stops at the point I have to hear it.

One of my siblings has a low tolerance for repetitive noises. And the soothing sound of a waterfall. I have the soothing sound of a waterfall outside my bedroom window. I like it. I've got the window open right now, listening to it. And the wind. I can hear wind chimes in the distance.

When you have low tolerance for annoying noises you can be driven to extreme measures. I've seen my sibling with the low tolerance for repetitive noises come unglued at a dear elderly lady who was trying to locate some photos to show on her digital camera. Each time she pushed the button there was a beep. Sometime after 10 beeps my sibling started to lose her composure.

Little camera and phone beeps don't bug me. But those gas-powered leaf blowers do. They should be banned.

Yesterday as I sat in the Wal-Mart Neighorhood Market parking lot trying to talk to my sister, an idiot pulled up with rap-like type music blaring so loud I had to get out of the vehicle and walk away from the noise so I could continue to talk to my sister.

With the wind chimes I have been driven to extreme measures, as in some time ago one of my neighbors had the wind chimes from hell. Three of them. They actually were more like wind gongs. I called 911 to complain that my hearing was being damaged. In Texas I got no help from the authorities to help with my serious case of being victimized by noise pollution.

So, I had to take matters into my own hands and launch a guerrilla operation. Under cover of darkness, I put on my camo wear, put on a ski mask and slithered my way to the location of the wind gongs. I figured I had about a minute, tops, if I was heard, before the noise polluters could make it outside. So, I moved fast, grabbed the gongs and ran fast. I disposed of them discreetly the next day.

That's my personal solution for dealing with wind chimes that disturb my peace. I don't recommend it for everyone.

Miss Puerto Rico Is In Miami Heading To Cold Flooding Texas

That's the Thursday 10am in the morning, balcony view, in what is likely the last in the current "View From Miss Puerto Rico's" series.

As you can see a layer of gray is blocking our usual view of a Texas blue sky. We have had a big delivery of rain in the past 24 hours. The Trinity River is above flood stage in some locations. A weather alert just informed me that the West Fork of the Trinity River will be flooding parts of Grand Prairie until sometime Friday.

The majority of you reading this are not Texans. So, I'll explain that Grand Prairie is east of Arlington, west of Dallas. Arlington is where the Dallas Cowboys play football. The Dallas Cowboys do not play football in Dallas.

Near as I can tell Dallas thinks the entire Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex zone is all Dallas with the 50 or 60 Metroplex towns, like Fort Worth, Arlington, Frisco, Grapevine and all the rest, being Dallas neighborhoods.

So, now you know why it makes perfectly good sense for the Dallas Cowboys to build a $1.2 billion new stadium in the Dallas neighborhood of Arlington and still call themselves the Dallas Cowboys.

The aforementioned Miss Puerto Rico called a few minutes ago. She is now in Miami. She was not pleased when I told her what the weather is like here. When I went in the pool this morning, at 7, it was raining and 61. Now, 3.5 hours later it is not raining, but it is windy and the temperature has dropped 10 degrees.

So, I picked up a coat for her when I was over at Miss PR's taking my daily balcony picture and feeding the cat. I told Miss PR to stay inside the terminal til I got the coat to her.

Driving Too Slow Without A Seatbelt In Fort Worth

Update: It is a couple months since I was ticketed for not wearing a seat belt while driving 10mph in Fort Worth. I complied with the ticket and indicated I wanted a jury trial to plead my case that I had not violated the spirit of the law. I have not heard back from Fort Worth. Case Closed. End of Update: On to Original Post....

Like I said in the previous blogging, I had myself a run-in with Fort Worth's version of the law today, soon after I was done hiking the Tandy Hills.

I got in my vehicle, started it up, turned on the A/C and started to drive. Big Ed put on his seatbelt. I was too sweaty to want to put on my seatbelt and did not see the need, til I reached Beach Street, since I was driving, slowly, on residential streets.

I drove til View Street hit Barron, took a right. Soon thereafter I saw flashing lights in my rear view mirror. What fresh hell is this, in this hell I'm living, I wondered.

The cop walked up. My window was already down, due to trying to cool off. "What's wrong, officer?" I asked.

"I need to see your license and insurance." I gave them to him.

"Why were you driving so slow?" the cop asked.

"We'd just finished hiking the Tandy Hills and were overheated, I wasn't thinking about driving too slow."

The cop then pointed to Big Ed and said, "He just put on his seatbelt when he saw the flashing lights, didn't he?"

I think this clucklehead cop was thinking he had himself a major bust.

"No," I said, "he put his on before I started moving. I said to him, why do you want that on, it's too hot?"

"I pulled you over because you were driving so slow I could see you weren't wearing your belt," the cop said.

I said, "I saw no need, since, like you said, I was driving slow, I was going to put it on when we got to Beach Street."

This seemed to be one of those cops, like that one who caused a scandal in Dallas, with a lack of an ability to correctly read a situation and make a good call. Instead this cop reinforced the dumb cop cliche, being yet one more example of why law enforcement is held, by so many, in such low esteem.

So, the cop disappeared to his Forth Worth Police Car. After 15 minutes he came back, had me sign something that said "CUSTOMER COPY" at the top. He said something about having 11 days to make an appearance. "That it was all detailed on the citation."

Okay, let's not even talk about the obvious, as in, I'm a grown up. If I choose not to put my seatbelt on when I'm all hot and sweaty and know that I'm going to be driving slow on some residential streets, that is my business, only my business and it certainly is not the business of the Fascists who run Fort Worth like a bunch of crazed Neo-Nazis, over-running bars, beating patrons, throwing innocent people face down on parking lots.

The citation tells me I can go to www.fortworthgov.org for more information about my ticket. So, I go there. There is no information about anyone's specific ticket. You can download a fine schedule, which was another bizarre thing. On that fine schedule there is no mention of what the fine is for driving slowly through a residential neighborhood, while sweating profusely without your seatbelt on.

Til today, I had not gotten a traffic ticket, of any sort, in years. Back in modern civilization, when I lived in Washington, a ticket clearly spelled out the fine, your options for paying the fine, or disputing the fine. This idiotic Customer Copy I got in this Third World type municipality has south of the border shakedown written all over it. You can barely read the print. It is small and faded. I'm sure a large number of people can not make sense of what they are expected to do.

Parts of America have really gone off the track. There are reasons we have a higher % of people behind bars than any other nation on earth, us, who are brainwashed to believe we live in the Land of the Free. If you lived in the Land of the Free you could not be stopped by the Gestapo because you were driving slowly through a residential neighborhood, sweating profusely, while not wearing your seatbelt.

Thomas Jefferson was right. For a Democracy to stay free you need a fresh revolution every 20 years or so. I feel like revolting.

I was able to decipher, among my options, that I can have my "case" heard in front of a jury. I believe that will be the option I take.

From what I've heard of other's experiences, the way this works in Fort Worth, is nothing you say to the judge will change anything. I don't even believe they are real judges in the way we think of them in the more advanced parts of the country. The idea that you have to go before a judge, because you didn't have your seatbelt on, explain the extenuating circumstances, with the judge under no obligation to take those into consideration, before imposing what amounts to being institutionalized theft.

I tell you, you people of Fort Worth, this is the corrupt system you get when only 6% of you turn out to vote for your city government. This town needs a revolution and a cleaning up of a very corrupt house.

As you can see, Fort Worth may try to stifle my right to choose to temporarily leave my seatbelt off, but there is not a thing they can do to stifle me from using my right to say whatever I want, to whoever I want, whenever I want. With all do respect to the Fort Worth Court and Police System. All do respect. Which is they are due none.

Only Child Syndrome

That's a German cartoon. The German on the right is saying, "He's an only child, isn't he?" To which the one on the left says, "He is now!"

The Only Children I've known have all pretty much matched the cliches about children who had no siblings. Spoiled, bratty, self-centered, selfish, an odd sense of entitlement, difficult to get along with plus a tendency to say inappropriate things that are rude and ill-mannered. Yet being extremely hyper-sensitive and brittle about even the most remotely critical remark going in their direction.

In other words, Only Children give themselves the permission to act, without expecting a consequence, in ways that when others act in a similar way to the Only Child, the Only Child becomes irrationally upset and reactive. It is a very odd spectacle to witness.

I knew an Only Child here in Fort Worth who was probably the worst of the breed I've encountered. Driving onto a museum's parking lot she told me a space would open up, because it always does. And sure enough, a car pulled out and we parked right by the entry. To which she said, "see, it always happens." Thus having her odd sense of specialness once more reinforced.

This Fort Worth Only Child was a married, recovered drug addict. She went to one of those Betty Ford Clinic type places somewhere in the Austin zone. When she completed the program there was some sort of graduation ceremony. One day she told me she was mad at her husband because he forgot her drug treatment graduation ceremony anniversary. Only Children expect every little thing to be made a big deal of. While at the same time they make absolutely no attempt at any sort of reciprocity.

I've never known an Only Child who does not expect a huge deal to be made over their birthdays. It's like they expect a day of worship. It's kind of creepy.

The Wikipedia article about Only Child Syndrome was on both sides of this issue, with some saying the Syndrome does not exist and others insisting it does. I'm on the side of those who know it exists.

I don't know who G. Stanley Hall* is, but in the Wikipedia article it said this, "G. Stanley Hall was one of the first experts to give only children a bad reputation when he referred to their situation as "a disease in itself." (*I looked up G. Stanley Hall, he was a pioneering American psychologist.)

Googling "Only Child Syndrome" I found several blogs written by Only Children, basically admitting they are different and another blog blogging about the Syndrome with several Only Children commenting on the blog and ironically and cluelessly confirming the Syndrome with their comments.

Below is an excerpt from the Blog written by an Only Child...

We have the tendency to cut people out of our lives—entire groups of people even—without a sense of remorse or grief. We draw a line in the sandbox, this is mine, this yours. But our sense of justice is clear and unrelenting—the world falls into right and wrong easily for most of us. The sandbox, then, is pretty symmetrically divided. We do this because we’re only children, and solitude is our foundation.

I know several only children—we kind of attract each other. We’re the honey and the flies. We don’t need anybody else damnit.

Okay, that’s wrong. We DO, we DO need other people. We need friends and love and all that jazz, but we prefer to outweigh socializing with solitude. Sorry, no offense, we just can’t help it. We NEED the intense me-time in order to be able to deal with you because frankly, dealing with you is annoying. You have needs and wants and demand compromise and you can’t read our minds, which means we have to communicate our own thoughts and feelings. The whole interaction gets overly complicated and we tend, then, to run off and hide, or to mentally check out, or to pick a fight just so we can have things OUR way. Then you get hoity toity and turn your nose at us accusing, “Only child syndrome!”

As God is my witness. No more Only Children shall cross my radar screen. If I can help it.

DECEMBER 17 I BLOGGED AGAIN ABOUT ONLY CHILD SYNDROME

The Wednesday Stormy Texas View From Miss Puerto Rico's Balcony

That is the stormy, 3 in the afternoon, Wednesday view from Miss Puerto Rico's balcony, in what may be the last in the current "View From Miss Puerto Rico's" series.

Miss PR called from the island today, confused about the flight info I'd printed up for her. She starts her trek back to Texas real early in the morning. I drew pickup duty at D/FW tomorrow around 3.

The last time I had pick up duty, when I arrived, Miss Puerto Rico was standing at the curb, outside the terminal, yapping on the phone. She did not notice me walk up and wheel off with her rolling luggage. About a minute later I heard screaming and a lot of fingers pointing my way from those who had seen the heist.

A lot of rain has fallen on us in North Texas today. I've not heard how the Haltom City collection of Fossil Creeks is doing during the flash floods. I heard from the Haltom City Flood Monitor early this morning, but not a peep since. This concerns me.

I was north of my current location during a bad part of the storm. I had to exit my vehicle and traverse unprotected ground for about 200 feet to reach shelter. I was pretty much drenched by the time I reached where the rain couldn't reach me.

But not as wet as I got this morning down at the pool. Just a few drops fell on my way to the water. Then a downpour started up about 10 minutes in. Usually I don't put back on my t-shirt after I get out of the water. This morning I did put it on, because I was shivering like a shaking leaf in a heavy wind. Shiver shaking is really good exercise. I don't recommend it, though. It's sort of an extreme sport.

I have not been a blogging maniac today. Except for blogging about Kieran the Scottish American and his Quiver invention. I learned after that blogging that Kieran's Quiver will be available for sale before Christmas.

In other Durango News of the day, someone named Aldo Singer asked me to be a guest blogger on CheapOair. It looks legit. I am unclear on why I would be motivated to do this.

Kieran the Scottish American Quivering About Quiver

I'm feeling totally socked in the gut, this morning, with no blogging fodder coming to me. And then I saw Kieran the Scotsman had Twittered about his Quiver website Googling at #14. Since a quiver has something to do with an arrow, or is an arrow, there is a lot of quiver info to compete with, search-wise.

Kieran's Quiver is an insulated device that you slip a bottle into that you want to keep either cold or warm. The video above makes it clear what Quiver is.

A couple days ago I blogged about Alexa Rankings being like Nielsen Ratings for websites. In that blogging I mentioned that Gar the Texan's blog has the lowest Alexa Rankings I've seen.

So, I wondered how Kieran's Quiver blog did Alexa Ranking-wise. Well, it does pretty good. Quiver's American ranking is 989,668. Quiver's Worldwide ranking is 5,316,883. I don't know why Kieran's Quiver blog is ranked as an American blog. Did we acquire Scotland as a territory and I was not informed?

I don't know if Kieran's Quivers are available yet, or if they are in the being produced stage. I know a Kieran trip to Santa Barbara, California has something to do with making Quiver. I also read something about the Scottish government not cooperating with the Quiver enterprise.

Maybe, since Scotland is now part of America, Kieran and Quiver can get ahold of some American stimulus money.

Queen Of Wink Finds Whisky Missing

I just heard from the Queen of Wink that when she returned to her kingdom, from her recent journey east, she found that the court cat caretakers had allowed the escape of the kitty Whisky.

Learning of the missing Whisky reminded me I am supposed to check in on Miss Puerto Rico's cat, Tasha, every day. I forgot til late yesterday and was on course to forget totally today until learning of the missing Whisky reminded me there is a cat who's welfare is dependent on me.

So, after I finished lamenting about the missing Whisky I headed over to Miss Puerto Rico's. That is the 4 in the afternoon balcony view in the continuing "View from Miss Puerto Rico's" series.

Note the color of our afternoon Texas blue sky. It looks tropical. Sometime tomorrow it will start looking like a winter northwest sky again, with incoming warm clouds from the south likely bringing us a lot of rain. The National Weather Service already, this morning, issued a Flash Flood Warning through Thursday night. So, this could be a real wet one. With us only barely dried out from the last real wet one.

The Queen of Wink told me that the New York ZipLiners told her that several people have told them they came to New York to ZipLine after reading about it on my blog. Miss Connie also told the Q of W that there are still 2 tickets waiting for me. The Q of W had so much fun ZipLining she'd love to do it again, though it was a bit expensive.

Looking Over A Tandy Precipice Into My Bleak World In Texas

That is the precipice looking over the edge of Tandy Falls you're looking at in the picture.

A couple hours ago, looking over a precipice into a dark abyss, was a perfect metaphor for how I was feeling.

In my website world I've been feeling a bit insecure lately due to the hacking incidents with bogus code being injected into my webpages. The problem seems to be easily fixed, once I discover it.

Today I thought to myself if someone could alter my code, what stops them from altering the code that tells Google that a click should be credited to my AdSense account? So, I got back here from taking a picture of the Tandy Falls precipice and clicked on my Eyes on Texas index page to check out the Google code. It was all as it should be.

But when I got to the bottom of the HTML there it was again, the nefarious code about which no one can tell me what it does. I quickly looked at the usual other suspect pages, then the other websites. I found no other problems.

I over wrote the bad index page with a clean version, went to my webhost and submitted a support ticket. I was hungry and wanted lunch and did not feel like sitting on the phone waiting to talk to support.

After lunch I had a reply from a tech guy telling me the problem had been found, fixed and I should have no further problems. I've been told that before.

So, I then go to my Eyes on Texas website and what do I see? In big bold letters "DUE TO TECHNICAL COMPLICATIONS THIS WEBSITE IS NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE."

I bet you can guess how happy this made me. My first impulse is to call customer support. Then I decided to see if I could over write the file. That worked.

I was afraid the entire website had been deleted, due to verbiage in the reply from customer suppport that said, "I have looked through your whole account and I stumbled across a php file that has been granting access to the hacker. I have deleted this file and your site, and your site should be completely clean, I have placed another cleaner script inside your account to remove any added scripts that file may have left."

I figured he meant "on" your site, not "and" your site. Apparently I was right, because the website is still there. I have heard this blather about being completely clean before.

We'll see.

The Texas Dish That Is Incredible & Inedible

I don't know why I paid no attention to all the incoming DISH, Texas information when it first came at me. Barnett Shale burnout? Maybe. I picked up just the gist, that being more accusations of Barnett Shale activity poisoning the air, killing animals, ruining lives.

Maybe I tune it out because no matter how big the latest offense might be, it seems nothing is done about it.

This week's FW Weekly's cover article, titled "Sacrificed to the Shale" is the first indepth look I've had at what has people upset about DISH. And now that I'm up to speed on DISH I'm more aggravated by what is happening in DISH than I was about what happened in Arlington so Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys could have a new stadium.

DISH's first claim to notoriety came when the town agreed to change the name of their town from Clark to DISH (spelled with capital letters) in exchange for the DISH Network providing all DISH residents free basic cable for 10 years and a free DVR from the DISH Network.

The short version of what has gone wrong in DISH is several of the Barnett Shale natural gas exploiters decided the somewhat isolated Denton County town of DISH was a great location for gas compressors. I believe there are now 7. They are very noisy, 24/7. Like a jet engine type of noisy. Pipelines bring un-odorized gas to the compressors, where it is compressed, odor added and then pumped out on more lines.

Eminent domain was used to take land for the pipelines, leaving the property of several people in the DISH area with property sliced up and useless.

And then farm animals began to get sick and die.

And then vegetation, like hardy trees began to die.

And then people started feeling sick. Some moved.

And then it was discovered that emissions from the compressors put a dangerous level of nasty chemicals into the air.

No Texas regulating agency seems to do any regulating of these type bad behaviors.

The EPA, as in the Federal Government is starting to get a bit cranky about how lax Texas is regarding what is spewed into the air that people breathe.

So, there you have the short version. Read FW Weekly's article to get the whole picture.

Read Texas Sharon's Blog for a lot more info about the DISH Scandal and other nefarious Texas gas woes.

An Hysterically Laughing Baby & Skiing In The Desert In Dubai

I have a few corespondents who consistently send me amusing things to see and read. I always see and read their incoming because of their established track records of good taste when it comes to what is interesting and funny.

One of my regulars who sends me good stuff is Alma, the Songbird of the Texas Gulf Coast. Another is Miss BSM in Hawaii. She has been absent for awhile, I believe due to acting on a TV show. And then there is Miss CVB up in Washington. She sent me the "Laughing Baby" video you see above. I've never before seen a baby laugh hysterically like this kid does.

Speaking of video. Last night I went to watch my DVR recorded latest episode of The Amazing Race. I have the DVR set to record 2 extra hours past the scheduled time due to football games running long. Last night an extra 2 hours was not enough. The recording stopped with 15 minutes left in The Amazing Race.

I did get a good look at Dubai though. The Amazing Racers had to fly from Phnom Penh to the Persian Gulf and find the tallest building in the world. Unlike most of the racers I knew this meant go to Dubai and find the Burj Tower. At least one of the racers thought Persian Gulf was a country.

Once they got to Dubai they had to get to the top of the still unfinished Burj Tower to find their next clue. Scary looking skinny skyscraper.

I've heard of the Dubai indoor ski attraction. Now I've seen it. I somehow thought this was in a mall. Instead it was in its own free-standing, sloped building. Inside it looked like night skiing, complete with ski lift. Outside, the racers were sweltering in the desert 100 degree plus heat, inside, the mountain was barely above freezing.

The task at the snow zone was a Detour. To non-viewers that means a choice between 2 tasks with varying levels of difficulty. All the teams chose dig through snow to find a little itty bitty figurine. I think it was a tiny snowman. One team found the thing and then one by one the teams gave up and decided to try the other task, which was using the snow to build a classic snowman, with coal chunks for eyes, a carrot nose, I forget what else. Oh, yeah, they had to build the snowman out in the desert heat and get it done to some judge's satisfaction to get their next clue.

My recording stopped before I saw a desert snowman building attempt.