« January 2003 | Main | March 2003 »
For those wishing to send flowers, or attend the funeral, visitation, etc. Here's what I know:
Send flowers to:
Ewton Funeral Home
Highway 28
Dunlap, TN 37327
(423) 949-2112
Visitation is from 5:00pm to 9:00pm Saturday, March 1 at Ewton. The funeral will also be there on Sunday March 2 at 2:00pm.
Let's see: The stock market is going to 0, gas prices are going to over $2.00. The drums of war continue to beat louder and louder. We've had a Shuttle disintegrate along with the poor astronauts inside. People getting burnt and trampled to death in night clubs. Floods, Blizzards, and Ice. I've had a nasty cough for a couple of weeks that shows no signs of going away. Sue's had strep throat. And this morning, I hear on the local news that we've had less than 2 hours of sunshine since Valentines Day...
I had started to make this a light-hearted jab at all the gloom we've seen this month. And then I get a message from my cousin, while I'm composing this, that my Aunt Denise, who has been ill for some time, passed away early this morning. My condolences seem so insufficient, but I offer them to her family and friends. Especially my Uncle Charlie. I know she meant the world to him. We'll miss her. I'll be keeping the border of the main page here at pr3d4t0r.com black for the next week out of respect.
OK, so the the final tally on the tongue biting poll (see Speaking in Tongues) was a draw. 1/3 of the votes explained it away as coincidence, 1/3 said it was supernatural, and the remainder, which is, uhh 1/3 oddly enough, they said Other. I don't know what every vote for other meant, but at least one person personally suggested to me that I simply don't know how to chew. To which I would say, look at my belly. Food is getting in there somehow.
Anyway, that poll is done and I haven't had much chance to work on my page lately (a little under the weather) but I'm going to start soon. And so, I put up another poll to see just what it is that brings folks out to pr3d4t0r.com so I can focus myself more on those parts of the site.
This article came to me by way of my friendly neighborhood Libertarian Party email list. It believe it is much more helpful than running out and buying tape and plastic
A Soldier's Viewpoint on Surviving Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Attacks
From: SFC Red Thomas (Ret)
Armor Master Gunner
Mesa, AZ
Unlimited reproduction and distribution is authorized. Just give me credit for my work, and keep in context.
Since the media has decided to scare everyone with predictions of chemical, biological, or nuclear warfare on our turf I decided to write a paper and keep things in their proper perspective. I am a retired military weapons, munitions, and training expert.
Lesson number one: In the mid 1990s there were a series of nerve gas attacks on crowded Japanese subway stations. Given perfect conditions for an attack less than 10% of the people there were injured (the injured were better in a few hours) and only one percent of the injured died.
60 Minutes once had a fellow telling us that one drop of nerve gas could kill a thousand people. Well, he didn't tell you the thousand dead people per drop was theoretical. Drill Sergeants exaggerate how terrible this stuff was to keep the recruits awake in class (I know this because I was a Drill Sergeant too).
Forget everything you've ever seen on TV, in the movies, or read in a novel about this stuff, it was all a lie (read this sentence again out loud!). These weapons are about terror, if you remain calm, you will probably not die. This is far less scary than the media and their "Experts," make it sound.
Chemical Weapons
Chemical weapons are categorized as nerve, blood, blister, and Incapacitating agents. Contrary to the hype of reporters and politicians they are not weapons of mass destruction; they are "area denial," and terror weapons that don't destroy anything. When you leave the area you almost always leave the risk. That's the difference; you can leave the area and the risk but soldiers may have to stay put and sit through it and that's why they need all that spiffy gear.
These are not gasses. They are vapors and/or air borne particles. The agent must be delivered in sufficient quantity to kill/injure, and that defines when/how it's used.
Every day we have a morning and evening inversion where "stuff," suspended in the air gets pushed down. This inversion is why allergies (pollen) and air pollution are worst at these times of the day. So, a chemical attack will have its best effect an hour of so either side of sunrise/sunset. Also, being vapors and airborne particles they are heavier than air so they will seek low places like ditches, basements and underground garages. This stuff won't work when it's freezing, it doesn't last when it's hot, and wind spreads it too thin too fast. They've got to get this stuff on you, or, get you to inhale it for it to work. They also have to get the concentration of chemicals high enough to kill or wound you. Too little and it's nothing, too much and it's wasted.
What I hope you've gathered by this point is that a chemical weapons attack that kills a lot of people is incredibly hard to do with military grade agents and equipment so you can imagine how hard it will be for terrorists. The more you know about this stuff the more you realize how hard it is to use.
Nerve Agents
We'll start by talking about nerve agents. You have these in your house - plain old bug killer (like Raid) is nerve agent. All nerve agents work the same way; they are cholinesterase inhibitors that mess up the signals your nervous system uses to make your body function. It can harm you if you get it on your skin but it works best if they can get you to inhale it. If you don't die in the first minute and you can leave the area you're probably going to live. The military's antidote for all nerve agents is atropine and pralidoxime chloride. Neither one of these does anything to cure the nerve agent, they send your body into overdrive to keep you alive for five minutes, after that the agent is used up. Your best protection is fresh air and staying calm.
Listed below are the symptoms for nerve agent poisoning:
Sudden headache, Dimness of vision (someone you're looking at will have pinpointed pupils), runny nose, excessive saliva or drooling, difficulty breathing, tightness in chest, nausea, stomach cramps, twitching of exposed skin where a liquid just got on you.
If you are in public and you start experiencing these symptoms, first ask yourself, did anything out of the ordinary just happen, a loud pop, did someone spray something on the crowd? Are other people getting sick too? Is there an odor of new mown hay, green corn, something fruity, or camphor where it shouldn't be? If the answer is yes, then calmly (if you panic you breathe faster and inhale more air/poison) leave the area and head up wind, or, outside. Fresh air is the best "right now antidote."
If you have a blob of liquid that looks like molasses or Karo syrup on you; blot it or scrape it off and away from yourself with anything disposable. This stuff works based on your body weight, what a crop duster uses to kill bugs won't hurt you unless you stand there and breathe it in real deep, then lick the residue off the ground for a while. Remember they have to do all the work, they have to get the concentration up and keep it up for several minutes while all you have to do is quit getting it on you/quit breathing it by putting space between you and the attack.
Blood agents are cyanide or arsine, which affect your blood's ability to provide oxygen to your tissue. The scenario for attack would be the same as nerve agent. Look for a pop or someone splashing/spraying something and folks around there getting woozy/falling down. The telltale smells are bitter almonds or garlic where it shouldn't be. The symptoms are blue lips, blue under the fingernails rapid breathing. The military's antidote is amyl nitride and just like nerve agent antidote it just keeps your body working for five minutes till the toxins are used up. Fresh air is the your best individual chance.
Blister agents (distilled mustard) are so nasty that nobody wants to even handle it let alone use it. It's almost impossible to handle safely and may have delayed effect of up to 12 hours. The attack scenario is also limited to the things you'd see from other chemicals. If you do get large, painful blisters for no apparent reason, don't pop them, if you must, don't let the liquid from the blister get on any other area, the stuff just keeps on spreading. It's just as likely to harm the user as the target. Soap, water, sunshine, and fresh air are this stuff's enemy.
Bottom line on chemical weapons (it's the same if they use industrial chemical spills) are intended to make you panic, to terrorize you, to heard you like sheep to the wolves. If there is an attack, leave the area and go upwind, or to the sides of the wind stream. They have to get the stuff to you, and on you. You're more likely to be hurt by a drunk driver on any given day than be hurt by one of these attacks. Your odds get better if you leave the area. Soap, water, time, and fresh air really deal this stuff a knock-out-punch. Don't let fear of an isolated attack rule your life. The odds are really on your side.
Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear bombs. These are the only weapons of mass destruction on earth. The effects of a nuclear bomb are heat, blast, EMP, and radiation. If you see a bright flash of light like the sun, where the sun isn't, fall to the ground! The heat will be over a second. Then there will be two blast waves, one out going, and one on it's way back. Don't stand up to see what happened after the first wave; anything that's going to happen will have happened in two full minutes. These will be low yield devices and will not level whole cities. If you live through the heat, blast, and initial burst of radiation, you'll probably live for a very, very long time.
Radiation will not create fifty-foot tall women, or giant ants and grass hoppers the size of tanks. These will be at the most 1-kiloton bombs; that's the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT. Here's the real deal, flying debris and radiation will kill a lot of exposed (not all!) people within a half mile of the blast. Under perfect conditions this is about a half-mile circle of death and destruction, but when it's done it's done.
EMP stands for Electro Magnetic Pulse and it will fry every electronic device for a good distance, it's impossible to say what and how far but probably not over a couple of miles from ground zero is a good guess. Cars, cell phones, computers, ATMs, you name it, all will be out of order.
There are lots of kinds of radiation. You only need to worry about three. The others you have lived with for years. You need to worry about "Ionizing radiation," these are little sub atomic particles that go whizzing along at the speed of light. They hit individual cells in your body, kill the nucleus and keep on going. That's how you get radiation poisoning - you have so many dead cells in your body that the decaying cells poison you. It's the same as people getting radiation treatments for cancer, only a bigger area gets radiated. The good news is you don't have to just sit there and take it, and there's lots you can do rather than panic.
First; your skin will stop alpha particles, a page of a news paper or your clothing will stop beta particles, you just have to try and avoid inhaling dust that's contaminated with atoms that are emitting these things and you'll be generally safe from them.
Gamma rays are particles that travel like rays (quantum physics makes my brain hurt) and they create the same damage as alpha and beta particles only they keep going and kill lots of cells as they go all the way through your body. It takes a lot to stop these things, lots of dense material. On the other hand it takes a lot of this to kill you. Your defense is as always to not panic. Basic hygiene and normal preparation are your friends. All canned or frozen food is safe to eat. The radiation poisoning will not affect plants so fruits and vegetables are OK if there's no dust on them (rinse them off if there is). If you don't have running water and you need to collect rainwater or use water from wherever, just let it sit for thirty minutes and skim off the water gently from the top. The dust with the bad stuff in it will settle and the remaining water can be used for the toilet, which will still work if you have a bucket of water to pour in the tank.
Biological Weapons
Finally there's biological warfare. There's not much to cover here. Basic personal hygiene and sanitation will take you further than a million doctors. Wash your hands often, don't share drinks, food, sloppy kisses, etc., ... with strangers. Keep your garbage can with a tight lid on it, don't have standing water (like old buckets, ditches, or kiddie pools) lying around to allow mosquitoes breeding room. This stuff is carried by vectors, that is bugs, rodents, and contaminated material. If biological warfare is so easy as the TV makes it sound, why has Saddam Hussein spent twenty years, millions, and millions of dollars trying to get it right? If you're clean of person and home you eat well and are active you're going to live.
Overall preparation for any terrorist attack is the same as you'd take for a big storm. If you want a gas mask, fine, go get one. I know this stuff and I'm not getting one and I told my Mom not to bother with one either (how's that for confidence). We have a week's worth of cash, several days worth of canned goods and plenty of soap and water. We don't leave stuff out to attract bugs or rodents so we don't have them. These people can't conceive a nation this big with this many resources. These weapons are made to cause panic, terror, and to demoralize. If we don't run around like sheep they won't use this stuff after they find out it's no fun. The government is going nuts over this stuff because they have to protect every inch of America. You've only have to protect yourself, and by doing that, you help the country.
Finally, there are millions of caveats to everything I wrote here and you can think up specific scenarios where my advice isn't the best. This letter is supposed to help the greatest number of people under the greatest number of situations. If you don't like my work, don't nit pick, just sit down and explain chemical, nuclear, and biological warfare in a document around three pages long yourself. This is how we the people of the United States can rob these people of their most desired goal, your terror.
Melody and her boyfriend Joey got to my house a little later than we all hoped Friday night, but we finally got underway and around seven. By nine we were at Jay's house to get the key to his cabin back in the woods of Grundy County. It was really staring to rain on already soggy ground and I wondered whether Mel's Explorer might not be able to get us through the rutted and muddy "road" leading to the cabin. But, we made it without too much trouble. Jay and Brandy got us situated and then left me, Mel, and Joey to ride out the rest of the storm that really got going later that night.
We were there not only to enjoy the cabin, but in the morning, if the weather cleared, we were supposed to go digging around for arrowheads around an old Indian rockhouse not far from the cabin. I didn't have much hope for the weather clearing, but it was surprisingly clear, windy and warm Saturday morning and so we set off for the rockhouse. Not long after we arrived one last storm rumbled through and the three of us had to huddle under the rockhouse waiting it to pass. I didn't find any arrowheads, just a few fragments of flint, but Joey and Melody had better luck (of course they were a bit more persistent than I). Joey found the first one. It was pretty cool I have to say. As I stood there turning over that arrowhead in my hands, I was struck by the fact that the last person to touch it before us was likely a Cherokee Indian probably more than 200 years ago. Hard to explain the way that felt.
We called it quits later that afternoon and headed back home after a stop by Jay's house to return the key. It was a good time and hopefully Mel will invite me back up there again soon. There are several pictures in the Nature album in the Gallery.
Oh, and after reaching a high of like 65 degrees Saturday afternoon, as we got close to home, it started snowing. Hard. We ended up with an inch or two by morning. Weird.
No, not a PowerBook :( The other day I googled ELIZA... hmm, that sounds rude. Anyway I was looking for information on this old virtual therapist. I had a version of ELIZA running on my old Atari 400 ages ago... ah, the good old days... I ran across information about the latest generation of chatterbots including one called ALICE. My interest was further piqued and so I decided to incorporate one into pr3d4t0r.com.
pr3db0t is based on an Alicebot called Program E by Paul Rydell. I haven't yet had a chance to alter her personality much, but the standard configuration is very adroit. Go talk to her and let me, and pr3db0t, know what you think. It's pretty cool.
OK, so I was bored and nosing around my logs and I decided to see which ancestors people are looking at in the genealogy section. Based on the number of requests for a person's main page (getperson.php) the top ten ancestors for January 2003 follow:
10. Judith Ann Layne - My Aunt Judy, born in Daus, TN. The 6th of 10 children of Hazel and Leander Layne.
9. Mary Purdom - Grandmother of my maternal grandmother Hazel (Tate) Layne. Born in Altamont, Grundy Co., TN in 1852.
8. William Harold Fleser - My Dad, the only son of Mabel and Harold Fleser. Born in Burnips, Montcalm Co., MI.
7. Jesse L. Coppinger - Great-grandfather of my maternal grandmother Hazel (Tate) Layne. Jesse was a farmer in Warren Co., TN.
6. Rachel Nunley - Jesse's wife. Rachel died in 1874 and is buried in Philadelphia Cemetery in Tarlton, Grundy Co., TN. A nickle if you can make out her headstone
5. William Nunley - Rachel's father.
4. Daniel Lee Layne - My maternal grandfather. Also known as Leander. He was born in Daus, Sequatchie Co., TN in 1907.
3. Hazel Anna Tate - My maternal grandmother. She was born in Beersheba Springs, Grundy Co., TN in 1913.
2. Robert Tate Sr. - My 6th-great grandfather. Progenitor of a large percentage of Tate's in southern middle Tennessee and Pulaski county Kentucky. Born 1725 in Virginia.
And the number one requested ancestor for the month of January...
1. John Lain Sr. - My 4th great grandfather. Progenitor of pretty much all the Layne's in the Sequatchie, Marion, Grundy, county areas. Born in Virginia in 1768. He and his family moved to Marion county Tennessee around 1800.
Tonight I'm watching television and some Ford SUV or truck, we'll say SUV, commercial comes on. The SUV would appear to be driving along in the clouds and I notice the word "dramatization" appears below this truck...
For the life of me, I can't figure out why it is that everyone is so gung-ho about killing a bunch of Iraqis. I can understand killing Mr. Hussein, but that's not going to happen, unless we're lucky. You see, it's illegal (or at least in poor taste or something) to assassinate to world leader. Oddly enough, it's world leaders that came up with this rule, but we don't have any problem sending our young men and women off to kill, and be killed, by other young men and women. Anyway, so why are going after Iraq again? Weapons of mass destruction? Where? How are you supposed to prove that something isn't there? Ties to Al-Qaida? Bin Laden doesn't seem too fond of Saddam in his latest message. It seems to be more a enemy of my enemy is my friend. It's the Saudis that seem to have the strongest ties to Al-Qaida, why aren't we invading there? Maybe because we need their oil!? There's and article on Warblogging that theorizes that we're going to secure Iraq's oil as a replacement for Saudi Arabia's oil before we go kill a bunch of their people too. Are we attacking because the have weapons that exceed the 93 mile range limit. These weapons were within this range until they had their guidance systems removed, which was another resolution that had to be complied with. Now they go a bit further, but less accurately. Meanwhile, in the North Korea, the nut-case there can hit California with nukes we know they have.
And why is it that CNN, Fox News and all the other news / jumble of crawling headlines, stations all seem to favor this war? Lately they don't seem like much more than a propaganda mouthpiece for the Bush regime... er administration. I wonder if CNN and the others get better or worse ratings during war and times of crises? Oh and did you notice that the government paid for anti-drug (don't even get me started) advertising during the Super Bowl! They are shelling out a lot of money for these and other ads. Losing this revenue source would be a big blow to any network.
How about this: Personally, what has affected you more, Saddam Hussein's evil jibbety-jabbety, whatever, or the collapse and scandals of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Adelphia, et al and all of the lost retirement savings that went with it. What happened with all those guys? Did they float away on golden parachutes? There's your Axis of Evil.
Oh and a note to all those demonstrators around the world: You want to have an impact on the decision to invade Iraq? Try boycotting American goods and services, instead of demonstrating. Apart from defense, oil, and the media, which are for an invasion, no other corporations have a dog in this particular hunt. If a boycott began affecting the bottom line of some of the United States more powerful corporations, it would be interesting to see how quick "public opinion" would change.
Bleh. Politics. Come on, can anarchy be much worse? At least we wouldn't have to pay taxes.
I whipped up a little poll script tonight so I can find out what everyone thinks about the tongue biting incident at Pizza Hut on Wednesday (It's on the pr3d4t0r.com home page). It'll be interesting to see what people think... assuming that my poll script isn't broken. So, anyway, vote. Let me hear from ya.
Yesterday me and a friend were at Pizza Hut discussing the troubles of making our paychecks cover the costs of living. He's having a little harder time of it, and we compared several expenses which were pretty similar until he mentioned: "Of course, we tithe too, maybe we should just tithe on our net salary instead of the gross". "Oh well, that's it", I said, "we don't tithe". Just as I pronounced the "th" in tithe I bit the crap out of my tongue. It hurt. Bad. I have bitten my tongue before, but... Ow. Really.
So anyway, it's no secret I've been having trouble with my faith for a while now, but come on. The apostle Thomas got the resurrected Jesus himself to show him the holes in his hands when he was having trouble believing. That doesn't seem fair at all. I mean Thomas walked around with Jesus Christ and witnessed miracle after miracle and when he has doubts Jesus pops in and says "Look! ta-da!". I get a sore tongue.
OBTW, just to clarify, we do put money in the offering plate when we go to church. We just don't go to church very often.
OK, I had to wait all day for Mark to post this to MeShow, and he finally has. It's basically the dance mix of lunatic playing Counterstrike. There's more info on Mark's site. Be warned, this mp3 is extremely profane, but then again that only makes it funnier. OBTW, it's a 4.8MB download.
Update 10:26PM: OK I listened to The Terrible Mr. Grimshaw again... did I mention this is really profane? You will hear several naughty words... a lot... really. You've been warned.
This is originally from http://crustacea.nhm.org/~dean2/crab.html:
This is a video taken in 6000 feet of water. An undersea robot is sawing a 3mm wide slit (1/10th of an inch ... remember that width) in a pipeline. The pressure inside the pipeline is 0 psig, while the pressure outside is 2700 psi, or 1.3 tons per square inch. Then a crab comes along....
| New pictures of the kids in the Main Album and some pictures of Saturday's flight in the Flight Album. |  |
Yesterday I got my new hinges for my PowerBook thanks to the guys at pbparts.com. The price was a bit steep, but what can you do, eh?
The operation took several hours. I had a problem with aligning the brackets correctly, and didn't notice at first the magnet stuck to the right bracket that is used to put the PowerBook to sleep, I believe. After I finally got everything back together, I pressed the power book and... nothing. I nearly puked. After jiggling some stuff and plugging in the AC power (I was using battery power for the first attempt) it booted into Mac OS 9 and promptly crashed with a bus error. More nausea. I took apart everything I could and re-seated connectors, looked for pinched cables, etc. Booted... everything was fine... except the date was very wrong. My stomach beginning to recover, I finished re-attaching all of the remaining pieces and reset the date, and it been working fine since.
If you have a Wallstreet PowerBook and you find one day that the hinges holding your display up have broken: A - You have my sympathies. This sucks. And B - Go to this page. They have a nice collection of links to pages that describe this problem and the remedies. Especially helpful is Jeff Pollard's PowerBook Hinge repair page. Thanks Jeff!
Friday: I worked on my taxes all night , which doesn't seem like a nice start, but I'm getting a refund and I had a nice chat with my Dad.
Saturday: We had the airplane booked from noon to 6 and planned on going to Dayton. As far as Alexandria knows, this is the only airport with snacks, and it is therefore, her favorite. We flew from Murfreesboro to Madisonville where I did a so-so touch-and-go with the snow-capped Smokies looming in the east, and then headed to Dayton. There was a chance my Aunt was going to meet us here and possibly brave a ride in 63 Foxtrot. She wasn't there, and therefore missed my finest landing of the day. The snacks were there however, and so Alex was happy. We left Dayton, and headed toward McMinnville. As I flew over the Sequatchie valley, I decided to turn towards Dunlap and take a few pictures of my sister's restaurant. Some of these turned out really well. I'll get them posted soon. Leaving Dunlap I flew towards the Savage Gulf, but thought better of it and turned towards Palmer. I flew over the house were my cousin, Bill, grew up. It was immediately recognizable as it sat next to a car lot that his father owned when we were kids. We continued over Gruetli then Coalmont and then turned towards Beersheba over "The Junction", and headed to McMinnville for another touch and go before heading back to Murfreesboro. Beatiful weather, pretty good flying (if I do say so myself), combined with flying over all of these familiar places made this one of favorite flights.
Sunday: We spent Saturday night at my sister's. Roxanne was nice enough to keep the kids Sunday morning and afternoon, even though her back has bascially immobilzed her for the past several days, while we went out driving. She had help so we didn't feel too guilty. Anyway, every now and again Sue and I go exploring Grundy, Van Buren, Sequatchie and even Warren counties looking at old houses, land that is for sale and what not. We didn't find much but enjoyed the ride none the less. I discovered that the my grandparents old house is for sale. It's the only house I'd ever known the both of them to live in and I felt a twinge to see it being sold again. Doesn't seem like it should be sellable. There are so many memories there...
... and then the snow began. We cut our driving a little short and headed back to Roxanne's for the kids, ate a quick dinner and started home. I didn't realize that it was supposed to get so nasty. We had a tense ride down the mountain and into Pelham before finally making it to the intersate where the roads were better. It was a very nice snowfall. Everything was coated in white, except the roads. Perfect. I had intended to take a few pictures, but when we got up this morning, it was rapidly melting. You'll just have to trust me, it was gorgeous.
Oh, I nearly forgot. Happy Birthday brother, you're half-way to forty. Congratulations. :)
Not a good morning so far. The hinges that hold the screen of my trusty old PowerBook up have failed and so I'm typing this on a computer who's screen is supported by books. This is going to make using my laptop on my actual lap very tricky.
I other news. My friend and co-worker Mark Rowan has set up a blog called MeShow. Good stuff over at MeShow. Funny guy that Mark, actually, his son Aidan is the funny one, Mark is just a reporter.
Also, an old friend from my days at ITT, Tom McCord contacted me through Classmates last night. It's always good to hear from old friends. And I'm glad to hear that Tom is doing well.
Finally, I altered the comments page here at pr3d4t0r.com to allow you to receive email when comments are posted. A big thank you to the ladies (and gents) at Scriptygoddess for this script. Please give it a try and let me know if you like.
Valentine's Day is coming up fast, and I would like to do something besides the usual. You know chocalates, dinner, movie, flowers. I thought maybe tickets to the Bon Jovi concert next Friday night. Susie loves Bon Jovi... I don't know why, well actually I do, and it has very little to do with singing. Anyway, I was going to try and get some very nice tickets I found on ebay. The final bid: $630.00!!! ÁAy carumba! So, anyone out there got any good ideas, or should I go with tried and true (boring)?
In other news: I decided to ditch the password protection around the Gallery. There really wasn't much point especially since I've instructed the search engines, via my robots.txt file, not to index that directory. Hopefully I'll find less pedophiles searching for... well I can't say, or that'll get indexed, so we'll leave it at that.
So like I was saying, I wanted to see if I can get people to "donate" money to me to buy a new laptop. The one I'm using is getting pretty long in the tooth, at least for my uses, but it's still a good little machine, anyway... To add a bit more incentive I was thinking about giving away the laptop I have now (A PowerBook G3 266Mhz with 192MB and 30GB HD) to a random donor once I reached the $2800 mark required to get the purty new TiBook I've been eyeing. But after a quick check it seems the law has something to say about this.
It is aparently OK to give someone money for something, or to give someone money for nothing. It is not ok to give someone money for a chance at something. Oh, and, it is ok to give money for a competition for something. It's all very confusing and quite silly. So I can't have my little raffle. :/ Of course if you want to make a donation, you can. The PowerBook fund currently stands at $6.15... $6.00 of it is mine.
After yesterday's post, I noticed a few other related sites are pretty good. First, there's whitey must pay whereby you can purge any feelings of guilt you might have after making a racist comment. And then there is Rent My Chest where for $20.00 you can rent this person's chest for your message. Included in this deal is a 640x480 image to be displayed prominently on the Rent My Chest website. It's good to see the entrepreneurial spirit is still alive and well.
You know there are so many causes and charities that we can give to, but sometimes you come across one that just sticks right out... Michel over at GiveBoobs.com is a 23 year college girl who has "itty-bitty boobies" but doesn't have the $4500 necessary for breast augmentation. Her solution is GiveBoobs.com, where she is asking for your contributions to help her with her dilemma. Even if you don't contribute, her site is worth a visit. It's not pornographic and she is really funny. God Bless America, eh? :) This cyber-panhandling is really starting to take off... you know I really need a new laptop, if people will help Michel get new boobs, and pay off Karyn's debt, maybe I can get a new computer out of the deal.... hmm.
I finally managed to get through a backlog of some of my old pictures and get many of the uploaded tonight. There are 11 new pictures in the database. Check the what's new page for details. There is one in particular picture that deserves a little additional explanation:
My great-great-grandmother, whose maiden name I believe may have been Marietta Bogart, married George Bogart and they lived in Montcalm Co., MI. This picture shows her and a bunch of other people in front of what may have been a school. If anyone has any clues about the picture and any of the people in it. Please let me know.
Other hilights: Me and 5 other cousins 25 years ago at the observatory in Beersheba Springs, six grandchildren of Daniel Lafayette Layne, and a picture my Aunt Judy and her classmates sometime in the mid 1950s in Daus, Tennessee that I have some questions about.