January 21, 2007  El Nino and El Nincompoop
 
Knock on wood, here in Wichita Falls, TX we've avoided the heavy snows and freezing rain recently forecast for this area. There's still a good chance for snow accumulation, but that doesn't seem to be a big problem to this Wisconsin dude. But the situation isn't viewed quite the same down here. I've spent some time watching local TV stations and their weather forecasts. Wichita Falls, TX and the Wausau/Rhinelander, WI TV stations are similar in the fact that they all are training ground for fledgling newscasters and weather forecasters. Although these upcoming TV personalities are from diverse parts of the US, they seem to quickly adapt to their adopted region. For example, a "crawl" for a typical seasonal weather situation would appear much differently (You know what a crawl is... it's the typed message that works it's way across the bottom of your TV screen from right to left advising you of upcoming weather conditions, and is usually preceded by some tone to catch your attention.)
 
For example, a Northern Wisconsin crawl might begin "Beep, beep, beep...This is a weather alert from your local Storm Team... It's winter and it's gonna be cold, probably down to -15° F. It'll probably snow and the roads will probably be, uh, snow covered. Stay tuned for weather updates"
 
For a similar weather situation, a North Texas crawl would be "WAIL, WAIL, WAIL, BEEP, BEEP, HONK, ZAP, AHOOGAH... This EMERGENCY WEATHER ALERT is being issued by our Weather Storm Team at Weather Central in our Texoma Weather Watch ControlPlex, based on Texoma Super Dooper Doppler and Crystal Ball Software predictions... Deadly cold is expected with temps dropping as low as 20° F, with hazardous road conditions and debilitating snowfall of up to 2 inches. Vast regions of our broadcast area are expected to suffer long power outages and major discomfort, including death. If you have a full tank of gas in your vehicle, ya'll better get your butts down to Brownsville and Old Mexico. All schools in the Texoma region will be closed indefinitely, meetings and events are cancelled, churches have cancelled services except for the Baptists. Stay tuned for updated reports from one of our interns since the rest of us will be in the Texoma Weather Watch Control Center Emergency Weather Bunker. WAIL,WAIL, WAIL, BEEP, BEEP, HONK, ZAP, AHOOGAH".
 
On other fronts....
 
George Dubyah Bush (known as George Whoops to his close friends) has achieved a 68% DISAPPROVAL rating regarding his position on Iraq. His trusted advisors for years have condemned his position on sending more troops to Iraq. Our Iraqi allies do not condone increased US troops in Iraq. GW's most trusted advisors have admitted that this whole Irag deal has gone sour from the beginning, so GW has appointed only the few mentally incapacitated individuals who still support him in this futile effort. Our troop resources are depleted to a degree that we are asking our troops to serve above and beyond the call. Further military intervention is virtually guaranteed in fronts such as Afghanistan and Somalia, stretching our forces even thinner and further jeopardizing our ability to defend our own country. George Dubyah is an out of control nincompoop.
 
However, he is quite photogenic:
 

 
Until later.....DKHT

January 16, 2007  Ice, Cold and Power Outages in Texoma
 
You may have heard that this part of Texas was totally crippled the past weekend by low temperatures, freezing rain and sleet. It's all true. Unfortunately there's a dearth of plows and salt/sand apparatus (the kind that makes up every fourth vehicle in the Wisconsin winters) so this area ground to a total halt. In fact, the local street departments have a small amount of crushed gravel to spread hither and yon for such emergencies, 'tho it seems to me to be similar to spreading ball bearings on teflon. They actually bring out street sweepers to recover the gravel after the emergency is over!
 
GeoTruk has been coated in 3/8 to 1/2 inch of ice since Friday morning, and only got cleaned off today. But at least it wasn't as bad as it still is just north in Oklahoma.
 
Which brings me to the term "Texoma"... This area along the greater I-44 corridor from Fort Sill to Sheppard AFB is called Texoma although the people that live in Texoma are either Texans or Oklahomans. Kinda reminds me of the plan several years back that called for the combination of Northern Wisconsin an Michigan's Upper Peninsula to combine into a new state named "Superior". I always liked that idea.
 
There are a few things in Texoma that are hard to get used to. Like a 50 ¢ tax if you use a drive-up food place for take-away. Or the fact that liquor stores close on Sundays and major holidays. And the fact that overpasses are called "fly-overs", which I hope isn't literal.
 
Then there's the over use of "plex". Just down the street is The Plex (I'm thinking that it's a shortened version of complex). The Plex is a huge family arcade/mini-golf/batting and fun stuff ad-infinitum facility, and the name Plex works for this facility. However, it has spawned AutoPlex, ShoppingPlex, FoodPlex, MallPlex, StadiumPlex, AntiquePlex and I'm waiting for a Church of the Immaculate ConceptionPlex to show up soon. Of course, the Greater Dallas Fort Worth area is known as the MetroPlex.
 
But the things that really irritate me are the local TV commercials. Local store owners either star in their own commercials or, even worse, put their kids in commercials. The kids usually have screechy high voices and try to talk too fast. In any case, these home-made commercials are horribly scripted and are quick to annoy. There's one guy that starts out saying that he woke up and realized how many different stores he had under one roof. He then reads a litany; a sofa store, a leather store, a chair store, a table store, a bedroom store, a recliner store, a kitchen store, a rug store... ad-nauseum. The jerk owns a discount furniture store, for pete's sake!
 
Electric power went out over 6 times in 5 hours on Saturday. My laptop can work for about 2-1/2 hours on it's battery pack, but that soon proved to be immaterial.... Mom's house alarm system has a big 12 volt 7.5 amp-hour battery which supposedly supports the system for a day or two in case of a power outage. However, this 1-1/2 year-old battery is on it's last legs and began wailing and dialing out whenever there was a power outage, but in it's final throes insisted on doing the wail/dial routine every 5 minutes... for about an hour when it finally died. 'Course, every time that dialout occurred it killed my sickly 26.4 Kbps dialup connection. I'd hoped to use the bad weather to catch up on emails and website work, but the power problems and need to split fireplace wood somehow took up my time.
 
Just before the bad weather hit I managed to find my first geocache of 2007 (also the first in about a year). It was just a short distance from where I'm staying and is located in a cemetery. Actually, it's located in an area for future cemetery expansion. The cache was located amongst a bunch of mixed trees, mostly mesquite and increasingly thick the further in you go. By following my trusty GPSr I soon wound my way to within 12 feet of the cache and proceeded to circle around watching both the surrounding area and the GPSr until I spied the camo ammo can near the base of a tree. Having forgotten to bring trade items I just signed the logbook, took a picture, replaced the cache as I found it and prepared to return to GeoTruk. I headed out in what seemed to be the right direction but I couldn't see the chainlink fence that helped guide me in and this forest got thicker and thicker. I was travelling pretty slow since mesquite trees are not very friendly. At first I had mixed readings on the GPSr but when I finally got in a relatively clear area the Magellan finally locked in my position and direction which just happened to be 180 degrees from where I should be going.
 
I thrashed my way back through the mesquite cursing myself for leaving the cellphone in GeoTruk and wondering how long it might take for the cemetery to expand far enough to find my rotting bones, when I finally spied a lone pine tree that caught my attention on the way in. Soon after I saw the chainlink fence which appeared on my right side, which happened to be the right side for the chainlink fence to be. I ultimately stumbled out of the dark, forbidding forest and crawled to GeoTruk and collapsed. The only thing that had kept me going was the hope that, if I survived, my rescuers would advise me that Gee Dubyah was impeached and Crack Shot Cheney was arrested for attempted murder... alas, my disappointment after reaching civilization tempted me to return to the mesquite! After years of hiking and bushwhacking through the forests of Northern Wisconsin without getting lost (at least not very lost) I thought it strange that my end might have come in a tiny mesquite grove in a North Texas cemetery.
 
Until later.....DKHT

January 9, 2007  New Year's Resolutions
 
The celebration of New Year's Eve is over. In the stark glare of daylight, the beginning of a new year is cause for many of us to take a realistic look at where we are in our lives and where we intend to go. Making vows and promises to improve our lives at this time is part of the age old process known as New Year's Resolutions.
 
You'd think that those of us who've been around for lotsa bunches of New Years would finally realize the futility of making resolutions. After all, most of us don't live up to our resolutions and wind up depressed, turning to even more terrible vices, beginning a long and ugly downward spiral. Then one day you wake up to find yourself lying in a gutter next to a pig...when then pig wakes up and walks away in disgust.
 
If you actually do make some modest goals towards your resolutions, the next year you have to top your previous effort, and that ultimately exhausts you and drives you totally nuts so that one day you wake up lying in a gutter next to ..... well, you get the idea!
 
So it's with trepidation that I approach this resolution business.

• First, I resolve to lose weight... Lots of weight! This is an absolute necessity since I now take so many prescription drugs that their cost could easily fund a third world nation. Every past time that I've worked hard to get cholesterol, triglyceride and blood sugar levels into good numbers, my doctor changes the goal numbers lower and issues me a new and more expensive prescriptions.
• Second, I resolve to finish the WI house remodeling and get that place on the market by the summer. This is the third year I've been working on that resolution. I get sidetracked easily.
• Third, I resolve to finish the Joy Camps project and the Minnick Ranch projects. I almost had Joy Camps done late last year, but I got some additional documentation on ebay that really justifies a rewrite. I actually brought my documentation and my scanner on this Texas trip, but misplaced the hi-power photo editing software disk. As far as the Minnick Ranch project goes, I also got 2 books on ebay that contain some important info about "Uncle" Jim Minnick and relating to Will Rogers and Tom Mix. The only thing is that these tidbits are buried in over 1500 pages of neat stories.
• Fourth, I vow to make much needed improvements to this website

So that's a plateful for me, especially in a one-year time frame. However, protocol demands a minimum of five (count 'em) resolutions per year. So I figured that my remaining resolution should be a bit more easily attainable, and maybe I'll toss in a couple more for good measure:

• Fifth, I resolve to continue to degrade my moron neighbors, simply because they deserve it.
• Sixth, I resolve to keep the box wine industry afloat. I can't afford those exotic beers pal Paul savors, and my beloved whiskeys and bourbons no longer are tolerated by my system or my diet. Sniff!
• Seventh, and finally, I vow that if I accomplish these resolutions, I will not be stupid enough to make more next year!

P.S. I apologize to all who have recently sent me emails and have not received a response from me...yet! I've had some issues with my email setup and have been busy with family stuff. I appreciate hearing from you and I promise to get back to you as soon as I can.
 
Until later.....DKHT