Interesting fish … and the people that ‘greet’ them: Grunions.
I’m surprised I didn’t know about them, although suspect if I lived in southern California I would? (see Grunion.org)
What is a grunion?
California grunion are a species of marine fish found only along the coast of southern California and northern Baja California. They are justifiably famous for their unique spawning behavior. Grunion spawn completely out of the water and lay their eggs on many sandy beaches in California. Shortly after high tide, on specific nights, sections of these beaches sometimes are covered with thousands of grunion dancing about on the sand. The popularity of these grunion runs means that some nights there are more people lining the beaches than grunion in the run.
The eggs remain buried in the sand throughout incubation, fully out of water for approximately 2 weeks. The larvae hatch when the eggs wash out by high waves during tides before the new and full moons. Grunion spawn at the age of 1 year, and live for 2 to 4 years. Because of their vulnerability during the spawning season, they are protected by a closed season. No taking of grunion is permitted during April and May. During other months, no gear is permitted so collection may take place only with bare hands, and a fishing license is required. Here at Grunion.Org we encourage “catch and release” of the grunion. For more information visit California Department of Fish and Game, Marine Region
Although I regularly complain about my cable bill … as well as all my other semi-necessary monthly bills … I’m thankful it isn’t $16.4 million like Daniel DeVirgilio’s recent bill.
BEAVERCREEK, Ohio (AP) — Try fitting this cable bill into the monthly budget.
An Ohio man says Time Warner Cable told him he owed the company $16.4 million. Daniel DeVirgilio, of Beavercreek, says his payment was rejected because it wouldn’t cover the total.
His bill is usually $80. DeVirgilio tells the Dayton Daily News he wanted to watch the NCAA basketball tournament’s Sweet 16 but didn’t expect it to cost a million dollars per team. He jokes he should have added Showtime to his channels because the charge of a few extra dollars doesn’t seem big in comparison.
Time Warner says human error is to blame for the payment problem. Officials say a worker typed the wrong amount owed, and a letter to DeVirgilio was automatically generated. They’re working to resolve the issue.
Stephen Lerner relayed plans to intentionally damage the economy of the United States last week and suggested it would start this May. He is (was?) a politically connected SEIU official who regularly visits the Obama Whitehouse, although is said to currently be on administrative leave – his phone rings through and voice mail still takes messages.
Lerner divulged the Cloward and Piven-like plan while speaking at a university forum in New York and was “brainstorming” plans to collapse Wall Street by targeting banks (“brainstorming” – the most polite news term I read). In the recorded speech below he is encouraging borrowers to stop paying their mortgages (and student loans) with the goal of creating the necessary conditions to push for a change in government and to redistribute of wealth. He comments that if enough people refuse to pay back their loans that they could “put banks at the edge of insolvency again.”
Lerner: “10% of homeowners are underwater, right, their home they are paying more for it than it’s worth 10% of those people are in strategic default, meaning they are refusing to pay but they are staying in their home that’s totally spontaneous they figured out it takes a year to kick me out of my home because foreclosure is backed up…. If you could double that number you could put banks at the edge of insolvency again."
Previously Lerner wrote that the modern labor movement has not done enough to capitalize on economic crisis and is at risk of losing relevance unless they take drastic measures. He writes,
"If we don’t seize the opportunity of the current economic crisis to chart a radically different course-committing ourselves and our movement to organizing for transformative change-we will sink into a deserved abyss of irrelevance."
I’d like to believe that this is all just the raving of a political socialist who is drunk on his own ego … and that rank and file SEIU union members have far more patriotism and love of country than to purposely participate in plot to bring down our economy. Perhaps the month of May will tell the story?
The DSL connection at the hotel was shockingly fast so I took advantage of the speed to update my Windows 7 with a Service Pack 1 update … and decided to update a couple of Internet browsers too.
After installing Mozilla’s Firefox 4 and realizing that several of my add-ons needed to be disabled, I was pleasantly pleased with the slightly faster program load time as well as the snappier tab loads and browsing experience.
I also did the same for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in upgrading from 8 to 9. It too seemed a bit snappier and the interface cleaner. All but the IE 9 install seemed improved.
Since I was in the mood, Apple’s Safari also needed to be upgraded to 5.0.4 which continued to be a fast and clean browser.
Google’s Chrome is a daily use browser for me and was already up to date. In my opinion it is still the quickest of the bunch for program loading and snappy browsing … although the speed difference was not as noticeable as in the the past.
I’m not unlike many in the daily browser debate and choice Firefox as my default. It it probably used 75% of the time with Chrome 20%, IE and Safari the other 5%.
The Winns’ residence in Charlevoix, Michigan has a “modest” boathouse and in viewing the video, they have a couple nice boats to put in it too (HGTV video below).
The 10,437 square-foot Round Lake home and 8,537 square-foot boathouse of long-time Charlevoix residents John and Zita Winn is an architecturally stunning masterpiece. One of the founders of 4 Winns boat company, John has been living in what he calls his "dream home" for the last eight years with his family of five. "Zita and I just talked about it the other day, we feel so grateful and lucky to be able to live there — our enthusiasm for the home never changes," he said. John’s boathouse, which displays up to 30 boats between 5-60 feet, also features nautical items that John has collected during his lifetime."
By the way … it’s for sale and according to Internet rumors the price has been reduced from $11 million to $9 million in case you are interested.
Google Voice will integrate with Sprint phones according to recent press releases from both companies. With the new partnership, Sprint customers will be able use their existing number as their Google Voice (GV) number or be able to use their GV number instead of their cell number for outgoing calls. The features of Google Voice technology will soon be to all Sprint cellphone customers. When a subscriber places a call or send a text message, they will gain the advantages of the web interface, call blocking, forwarding, ringing multiple devices, and other Google Voice features.
When you enable Google Voice on your Sprint phone, you’ll get:
One Number for all your phones Pick the phones you want to ring (home, work, etc.) when your Sprint number is dialed, so you’ll never miss a call.
Online Voicemail Check your messages by phone, email, or on the web and keep them for as long as you’d like. Plus, your messages will be converted into text and sent to you via text message or email.
Customization, control & low-priced international calling Create and assign personalized voicemail greetings based on who’s calling you, block unwanted callers, mark telemarketers as spam and make international calls at our very low rates.
Although I’m not a big Don Imus fan, KT McFarland discussed the point that has been bothering me seeing the many uprisings in the middle east. At what point do we restrict our military involvement around the world to our security and national interest … and at what point do we commit our blood and treasure to someone else’s civil war … for ”humanitarian reasons?” Cambodia,Srebrenica, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, Iran, etc? (video below)
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be involved in Libya, but the term “mission creep” does comes to mind whenever we commit our military forces to help one side or the other. Let’s hope our current involvement is “limited” or that the next middle eastern country experiencing civil unrest doesn’t end up a seemingly never ending military mission like we seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With hundreds of great woodworking sites on the web, it is difficult to know which ones are worth viewing whenever there is a new article. Most promote their published product or so overrun with advertising that it reminds me of going to a myspace page (mind you I haven’t gone to one in a few years so they may have improved?) Others that are personal blog attempts are often incomplete and difficult to follow. That said, I’ve appreciated the effort and expertise that Matthias Wandel offers on his blog, woodgears.ca. If you enjoy working with wood in a home shop, his suggestions and ideas are a welcome and easy read – very clear.
His recent post, Causes of planer snipe on small thickness planers, offered an excellent explanation as to the problem and offered a couple creative and simple solutions … something that is rather timely for me since I’ve been wanted to utilized some recycled lumber on a project (I don’t currently own a planer). His video is embedded below.
One would think that since the invention of the carpet sweeper in 1860 that companies would have improved the vacuum cleaner enough in 150 years to figure out howNOT to have the beater brush get bound up with hair. Obviously not, since over the past few decades I have still ended up cleaning and replacing the belts and rollers of the four different brands of sweepers we’ve owned: Hoover, a classic Royal, Panasonic and our current Oreck XL(a model I would highly recommend).
This past week I brought my daughter’s Oreck home after she mentioned it was smelling like rubber. Knowing it was probably the belt wearing due to the brush picking up hair from an apartment with three girls, I expected a simple cleaning. Wow … a lot more binding of the bearing than I expected. Thankfully an ebay seller had a new roller and a couple of belts for under $15.
Interesting fish … and the people that ‘greet’ them: Grunions. 
