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Eeewww

I’ve been around the Net for almost 15 years now, and I’ve seen some really strange things posted online. Then I ran across this site about an exploding whale and just had to check it out. Not the wierdest thing I’ve seen online, but it ranks up there with the good ones.

According to the Urban Legends Reference Pages, the incident actually happened.

Download the video and watch. Particularly amusing is the newscaster’s description of the aftermath. I can’t believe nobody thought about that before they started…

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Tour de France

I’ve been watching the Tour de France on OLN lately, and I must say, it’s been a pretty exciting race so far. There are a lot more riders dropping out early this year than I remember from the last few years. Crashes and the heat are playing pretty big roles in that this year. And this year, crashes have taken out some pretty big name riders.

Looking forward to more exciting stages coming up, especially the individual time trial.

Go Posties!

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Summer storm season

It’s summer, which means hot humid weather, lazy days trying to stay cool and plenty of sunshine. Summer also means it’s hurricane season. So, while I’m out enjoying the summer weather and hanging out at the beach, I’m also keeping an eye on the weather (along with everyone else). Fortunately with hurricanes you always get a lot of advance notice, so there’s plenty of time to prepare.

I’ve been pretty lucky so far in the 4 years I’ve been here. The closest I’ve come to encuontering a hurricane was Hurricane Floyd in 1999. That one caused some major traffic snarls when the decision was made to call for an evacuation. Luckily I was already headed out of town anyway, so I was already on the road and missed all the traffic jams.

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Family reunions

Back from my trip to Jackson, AL for my wife’s family reunion. It was an interesting time. Got to meet lots of her relatives, and collected a lot of information for building the family tree. It’s pretty extensive, and some of the information I got led to some surprising connections. I’ve got enough to keep me researching for at least several months now. Added a couple hundred more names to the family tree database.

Jackson, AL was bigger than my wife and in-laws led me to think, although it was still pretty small. It’s a nice area, lots of woods and green things that contrast sharply with the reddish brown soil in the area. I’ll have to ask my geologist brother about that.

One thing that I would have liked to do was get a little bit of oral history recorded on videotape. Didn’t really get the opportunity to do much of that, since I was so busy getting stuff for the family tree database. Might have to wait for another time, although I don’t think I can wait too long before some of the older generations with the more interesting stories pass along.

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Doing good things

Today I made my 46th blood donation. Maybe 48th, could be 50th. The number is a little fuzzy because I’ve forgotten how many donations I made while I was back home in Canada. I’m pretty sure it was 34. I remember being pretty close to getting the pin for 35 donations.
I’ve been a regular blood donor since about 1989 or so, with the exception of the three years I lived in Detroit. That was just because there wasn’t a conveniently located donor center that I could find.

I go every 8 weeks (6x a year) and donate a pint of my AB+ blood. The people at the donor clinic love me because I’m AB+ and I have large veins. It gives me a good feeling to know that I’m helping someone out. And I get pop and cookies in return. Doesn’t get much better than that if you ask me.

Have you donated blood recently? At all? If not, why not? you really should. What have you got to lose except a pint of blood that can be used by someone else?