Bertha is now a Category 3 hurricane spinning out in the mid-Atlantic. Forecast path has it turning north, passing to the east of Bermuda. All of us on the east coast can relax again...

Now posted on the Adventures page: pictures of the beautiful Hunting Island Marsh Boardwalk!

...and we're watching Bertha's projected course turn northward into the mid-Atlantic now, sparing the US coast from a tropical landfall. Nice way to end a holiday weekend...

Not much else from the weekend, just three days spent doing yard work and house work and taking my bride on a date and giving the puppy as much attention as she can handle (which is a high threshold indeed). Good weekend, absolutely! It's a shame that Monday has to come around every seven days...

Well, the liberal media (including The Weather Channel) are getting breathless with the anticipation of Tropical Storm Bertha crossing the Atlantic Ocean, with the projected course presently being the East Coast (and if you look at the map above, linked to the National Hurricane Center and automatically updated when the NHC website updates its forecast, headed right for the South Carolina coast in about a week). This is the most excitement they've had since the record hurricane season of 2005...

That said, I've lived on the South Carolina coast for 33 years now, and have survived hurricanes like Hugo and David and tropical storms that have landed and passed by. These storms have been coming since the media was scaring us with man-made global cooling threats in the 70s into the current media scare of man-made global warming in the 2000s. I didn't believe in man-made global cooling then, and I was right, and I don't believe in man-made global warming now, and will also be proven right when Algore's threat of global apocalypse doesn't happen in just over seven and a half years. Hurricanes have formed every year, and will continue to do so. Man cannot stop a volcano from exploding, cannot stop earthquakes, and cannot control weather patterns that create tropical storm systems. They have happened since before European explorers first came to the American continent, and before the prehistoric travelers crossed the land bridge that was is today the Bearing Strait to become the American Indians, Myans, Toltecs, and so on.

So, relax and live it. Bertha will go where Bertha will go. We just have to be prepared to survive. It is only because of today's technology that we can follow where storms like this will go so we can plan ahead... So, until it gets closer and a landfall prediction can be a bit more accurate, I'm not going to worry about it at all... I'll let the breathless liberal media hacks do that for me.

Well, here we are... a three-day weekend. There's that nice advantage of Independence Day falling on a Friday...

So, I spent this morning finally mowing the front and back yards, cutting down long-growing weeds and grass. It had gotten to where we lost the puppy in the back yard when she went out to do her puppy bizness...

I prepared a typical holiday cookout for my Bride, some of my Jackburgers and Grandma's baked beans. Her smile was all I needed to tell me that I did ok for her.

Don't know what we'll do this evening... not sure if we'll try to brave the rest of the county's population at the river for fireworks shows, or stay home where it's quiet...

Don S. Davis passed away on June 29, 2008. He was 65 years old.

Don co-starred on Stargate SG-1 for the show's first seven years, helping to launch the enduring science fiction franchise. Davis played Major General George Hammond, base commander and a father figure to many of the show's characters.

He is also well-known for his portrayal of Major Garland Briggs in Twin Peaks.

Off-screen, Don was beloved by the show's cast and crew. He departed the show in 2003 due to a medical condition that restricted his workload, but returned for several guest appearances on SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis in the following years. Don worked hard to improve his health, and continued to work both on screen and off until his death.

The full notice and article are here: http://gateworld.net/news/2008/06/don_s._davis_1942-2008.shtml

Mendy and I had the pleasure to meet Mr. Davis a couple years ago at a Vulkon SciFi convention in Orlando. If you ever saw him on Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, The X-Files (he played Scully's father in an episode or two)... he always came across as the strong, firm, and gentile Texas gentleman. On stage, he was no different; in fact, what really endered him to us the most was his pure humility at being applauded by a standing-room-only audience, and then how he thanked us all for being fans. He was perhaps the most gracious celebrity we have ever met. Frankly, Hollywood needs a few more people like Mr. Davis...

So, here's our picture with Mr. Don S. Davis:

We got home yesterday to a very excited puppy, just all wiggly and jumping and crying to welcome us home. The  cat, of course, didn't care... so long as we fill his dinner bowl. Oh well...

Today I washed our cars. Well, the sap and little fruit berries had fallen on the cars, and I had to wash off the fruit acids to keep them from eating through the cars' bodies. But, as it always happens, because I washed the cars we ended up with severe thunderstorms that actually flooded our yard for a time, sent water streaming down the sides of the road like little rivers, severe thunderstorms which would not have happened had I not washed the cars.

On the other hand, I don't have to do any yard work today because the grass is still soaked. But, I will have to get that done... in some parts of the yard the grass has already grown taller than our puppy!... Imagine, having to use a machete in the far reaches of the back yard to find a Pomeranian...

Tomorrow stars a four-day work week...

...well, Friday is here again. The work week just seems to go on and on, and then suddently the weekend is here once more (and is entirely too short).

We decided we needed an emergency change of scenery, so we got Nana to stay with the puppy and kitty and we took off for one of our favorite getaways... Biltmore. Before we left home I checked the Weather Channel website and saw that we were headed into rain and thunderstorms... but incredibly we only hit rain for maybe a minute or two the entire trip!

If the weather holds, tomorrow we'll enjoy the fully blooming roses in the formal gardens before we have brunch in the Deer Park restaurant and then buy some Biltmore wine we cannot get at home...

...and do everything we can to make this weekend go nice and slow...

...so this week I filled my gas tank and it cost me over $45. While this is not yet a crippling effect on our net income, it's beginning to have an impact...

A tank of gas gets me six round-trips to my office halfway across the county, or 300 miles a week. This is a fixed matter; I cannot quit and find a comperable job a mile from my house; besides, I'm eight years from retirement, so I should not have to change jobs this late in life when my career's end is so close. Nor can I ride a bike to work as I cannot realistically be expected to spend a couple hours or more pedaling across islands and bridges every day. My company cannot be expected to open an office near my home for my own use. The hours I work are untypical, so I cannot carpool. My still-new car gets comperable mileage to the nine-year-old car I traded in.

What can I do? Nothing really. This country, much of the world in fact, is an oil-based economy. For two decades I've heard politicians decry the US dependence on foreign oil contributing to our gas price woes, saying we should spend tax dollars on new energy sources. Democrat Messiah Obama (I took this title from Rush) says we should enact windfall profits taxes on the oil companies. Both Messiah and McCain believe in taxation to fight the ficticious man-made global warming. Even Hillary, named for Sir Edmond Hillary three years before he climbed Mount Everest and became a publicly-known individual (hey, that's what she claimed, not my words) wanted to take money from the oil companies. She said Americans have to be smarter about our gasoline usage. Hey, smartest-woman-in-the-world... exactly what am I supposed to change? Oh yeah, the Messiah Obama promised change...

They are asses.

At this point we are a generation and a half from the last time the US government enacted windfall profits taxes on the American oil companies. I remember that vividly, because I was a motor route newspaper carrier back then (for you youngsters, this was when Jimmy Carter was President, he who was the inventor of the "misery index" and told Americans to cut down their heat and wear sweaters and kimonos in their homes instead of being comfortably warm, while letting Iranian terrorists hold Americans hostage for 444 days). When I started as a carrier I paid about 45 or 50 cents a gallon for gasoline. Then that brilliant Carter slammed the oil companies with the "windfall profits taxes"... and within a year I was paying $1.50 for a gallon of gas. So, an idiot liberal Democrat took the profits from public corporations (as opposed to Federal departments) and my work expense tripled. The oil companies targeted their profit efforts overseas, since they could not make a profit domestically. Who suffered? the American consumer. I guess that makes perfect sense to a liberal.

Since then the liberal environmental extremists have controlled Congress to prevent new oil exploration and drilling, forcing our oil companies to buy oil from other countries. That's right, our oil companies BUY OIL from OPEC and other oil-producers. No new refineries have been built in two generations. No new oil wells (to my knowledge) have been drilled in two generations. So domestic oil and gas production has been totally static since a third of the way back into the previous century.

Has anyone noticed that our population has grown? that our cities have grown? that there are new subdivision for all the new people and families? The growth of the country HAS NOT BEEN STATIC.. in complete reality, there are more people now than when the liberals stopped allowing oil companies to do what they do best. In other words, especially for you liberals,  our oil companies are producing for a 1970s population... not a 2008 population. But, I guess that makes sense to a liberal.

So the Democrat Messiah (who, remember, had all those people fainting at his appearances) and the Republican Liberal (the "Maverick" McCain) wants to take money from the oil companies AGAIN. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

Now, neither of these liberals running for President has ever worked in the private sector with the bottom-line demand to make a profit. All companies exist to make profits. If they do not make profits, they go out of business. If they make profits, they can hire more people, expand the business' capabilities, and if they make enough profits outside people will begin to INVEST IN THE COMPANIES... which means more operating capital for the company to continue expanding, hiring more people... and when the company makes more profit THE STOCKHOLDERS MAKE MORE MONEY. More people invest, profits increase, and more people make more money... THIS IS HOW CAPITALISM WORKS.

The liberal Presidential candidates want to take money from legal, non-government companies. So, who thinks that if the government confiscates the profits of an American company, I should plan for my gasoline to go up to perhaps 11 or 12 dollars a gallon (following the tripling-effect from the last time a liberal took the oil companies' profits).

If I had a chance, I would love to ask the Maverick, the Messiah, the Smartest Woman in the World, and the Pastor of the Church of Global Warming (who, it was released this week, actually increased his home's energy use by over 10% from last year, the f***ing hypocrite "do what I say, I don't have to") the following:

1. You want to take the oil companies' profits. Why don't you just do like Chavez and Federalize the oil companies? But then... does anyone in the government now how to find/drill for/refine oil? Of course not... so you'll just raise our taxes in order to pay the people who know how to do so...
2. You want new energy sources made available to replace reliance on foreign oil? First, have you considered DOMESTIC OIL? Second, what new energy source is available to take the place of OIL... PERIOD? That's right... higher taxes.
3. New energy sources require creative people to research concepts "outside the box" and envision the future. The first people to refine gasoline and the internal combustion engine did not do it overnight... it took years and years. Until it became common, the horse and buggy and the horseless buggy were together on the streets until the horse was retired as a regular means of transportation. This was not done by anyone in politics... this was done by American citizens and inventors. Politicians just demand... higher taxes.
4. Until someone creates a new energy source that is affordable by the American population, WHAT WILL YOU DO IN THE MEANTIME ABOUT THE PRICE OF GAS? That's correct... make us pay higher taxes.
5. Name one thing the government has created that hasn't punished people. That's ok... they mean well, but we need higher taxes to continue funding the Federal programs that don't work.

I have a great idea. I'll take this from that great Liberal of Two Americas, John Edwards (of whom I embarrased to be a Southerner from the same state of South Carolina [despite that he served from NORTH Carolina])... let's go to the concept of two Americas. I know, it was tried from 1861-1865 and we know how that turned out. But, this time it would not be a separation based on war... it would be a separation based on taxes. After all, we left the British empire in part due to excessive taxes and no representation... but, not to have two separate United States countries, but to allow individuals the option to pay liberal- or conservative-level taxes.

Let those who want the vote in the Messiah Obama because he promises "change" also voluntarily agree to pay for the massive government (and doomed to failure) government programs he wants to enact against the American people. Actually, we can include those who want to vote for the Maverick because he sides with liberals any chance he gets. Those of us who do not want to be dependent upon the government for anything except those duties for which is Constitutionally-bound can pay only for those necessary obligations... such as MILITARY DEFENSE. Nowhere in the Constitution say that I have give my hard-earned income to the government because someone says I make too much (in liberal-speak that is "pay my fair share", or in other words I make too much because I prevent someone else from earning the same money).

Frankly, I don't expect Social Security to be available when I am eligible to draw my punitive amounts. My own investments... STOCK PURCHASES ON COMPANIES MAKING WINDFALL PROFITS... is a hell of a lot more than that embarrassing Social Security amount. Some of my stocks have made double-digit profits, while Social Security gives a paltry 2%. (Did you know that everyone in Congress does not pay into Social Security, in favor of a retirement plan that pays scores more in returns?) So, my own investments the past 15 years or so have given me probably seven or eight times the retirement capital that Social  Security investments have given me in 31 years?

OH, yeah... did you know that the Government currently controls where oil companies can drill? can build refineries? controls how many blends of gasoline are to be sent to various parts of the country?

At least three of my South Carolina Congressional folks have finally seen the light and now support offshore drilling... you're a decade late, guys, but I guess when you're in Washington your logic cells die off at a faster rate...

I'm done ranting. I just want to thank all the politicians for their brilliant contributions to our misery the past several decades. I could have done so much better without your interference...

Well, it was a rough week... not a bad week, but rough... Spent the week working on a new major project, learning how to and making the base code installations of a new computer system. But then, there was still the daily work to do on top of it all...

My Bride has been so wonderful, adapting her cooking schedules to my uncontrollable hours and otherwise coping with my long days far beyond what a normal wife would do. She's the only reason why I'm not frustrated with my recent days. I spent enough years working long days and nights, finally gotten to banker's days (as opposed to banker's HOURS), and then back into double-long days...

That's ok. I'm up for the challenge of something so new, and yet so much like what I did over twenty years ago (for the first time then). My days have become reinvigorated with this new challenge... likely the pinnacle of my career (unless there is something even more major in the next few short years)... But, more important, I couldn't do it without my Beautiful Young Bride as my inspiration to keep going...