Courtesy of my brother and his wife, jacob and krista southard.

Staples
314 11:31
221 11:37
44 11:40
1725 11:40
20 11:42
388 11:46
1001 11:51
1174 11:51
807 11:51
4 11:51

Fentress
314 13:03
221 13:12
44 13:18
1725 13:19
20 13:20
388 13:33

Holly and Debbie had to stop at Staples and fix a hole in their boat.  The womens boat after them was similarly delayed, but I didn’t hear why.

Yonley/Rendon are running about eight minutes behind the rask/yonley/feaster boat, and that lag is growing.  It’s pretty much the same for the RYF boat following Belizeian boat.  The bookies are offering even odds on grupo taca burning out and falling way behind.  Not that it’s ever happened before…  Yonley/Rendon and Rask/Yonley/Feaster are trucking along at a derrick-steady pace.

Tim Curry lost his neck towel some way above Martindale, but seemed to be handling it well.

Rebekah Zeek wasn’t long behind him, and was looking solid.  The portages seemed a mere annoyance, but saved her the gouged skid plate that Curry earned on the dam and the hang and scrape that an aluminum boat right behind her got on the approach to the bridge.

I spent the day driving in and goofing off.  Everyone seems to be in good spirits, and doing their best to not think about water levels.  The derrick kids went swimming at Pecan Park just after lights out and woke up the old folks. 

More to come later.  Enjoy the lame pre-race pics at http://cid-86e0371a36435fa2.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/2009%20Texas%20Water%20Safari

Yep.  I need a camera that’s reasonably shockproof and water resistant, and will occasionally go under water for cool pictures.  I’ve looked at a couple now, and camera manufacturers just don’t seem to get a few points.

First I reviewed the Vivitar V8400.  It’s pure crap.  It just plain feels light and cheap, the buttons are loose but don’t take presses half the time, and the image quality isn’t significantly better than my cameraphone.  Plus it uses a proprietary connection for the USB cable, a major no-no.

I’ve looked at a few olympus models, and they seem to have better quality, but have even more proprietary features that exclude them.

Thus the search continues.  I just want a camera that can get wet and doesn’t have flashy custom features.  It shouldn’t be hard.  If someone made one that met a few basic requirements, I’d buy it immediately:
Waterproof or very water resistant
Takes standard AA batteries
Takes a standard mini USB plug
Takes standard CF, SD, or micro-SD memory cards

I’m not buying your cheap lock-in crap from china.  If my old HP photosmart M417 were waterproof (and not broken), it would be a clear win.

I have a gnawing hunger, beyond grumbles and salivation.  My muscles have that sharp searing pain, not from lactic acid but from muscle fibers not having the resources to completely regrow.  Torn tendons won’t come back, ligaments stay loose.  Malnutrition, no matter from apathy, misguided good intention, or lack of resources, is in the end still malnutrition.  The bill tallies the same in the end.

While we’re up to almost two thousand officially suspected cases and over a hundred deaths, it’s not all that bad.  It spreads about like any other flu, we have stockpiles of drugs that effectively treat it, and nobody outside of third world mexico has died of it.  Most domestic cases have recovered completely.  It’s all just getting a lot more publicity – if this weren’t an H1N1 flu strain, nobody would give it a second thought.

That said, it’s one quick mutation away from being pretty deadly.  Don’t let your guard down, just don’t panic.

AP article: ...ovTCAD97QOF500

CDC info: http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/

PANIC and stuff!

You’ll find this on a lot of outlets that carry AP news.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_swine_flu_emergency

WASHINGTON – The U.S. declared a public health emergency Sunday to deal with the emerging new swine flu, much like the government does to prepare for approaching hurricanes.

Officials reported 20 U.S. cases of swine flu in five states so far, with the latest in Ohio and New York. Unlike in Mexico where the same strain appears to be killing dozens of people, cases in the United State have been mild — and U.S. health authorities can't yet explain why.

Hope you got your preparations done.  If you haven’t already, get a small stock of N95 masks, gloves (latex, nitrile, or vinyl), sanitizer gel and/or alcohol, and make a casual attempt to avoid large groups of people and mass transit.  Personally I’m still going to go to work, still get groceries, and still live life – this is just the time to go through that mental checklist. 

Okay, JWR is pretty much a crackpot, but he has a lot of good info.  There’s a new flu outbreak that’s being called the swine flu or mexican flu, even the CDC is reporting on it.  It doesn’t appear to be very deadly, but it’s hard to keep down.

The Mexican Flu and You

Protecting Your Family From an Influenza Pandemic

Any way, buy some breathing masks, think about avoiding mass transit and large groups of people, and prepare to spend a week or two mostly at home.

This is how the zombie apocalypse begins…

On a dare, I got some food from mcdonald’s.  A big mac, fries, and a chicken wrap.  I’ve had a couple of fries and a couple of bites from the big mac and I already feel ill.  It tastes pretty horrible.  How does anyone eat this?  Why did I love it as a kid?  Save me!

And half the county’s 911 system is down because of it.

Apparently they did something similar a couple of weeks ago, raided a guy’s home for some alleged misdemeanor offenses supported only by druggie witness testimony (www.uwwwb.com).

This morning they raded Core IP down the road.  They provide the internetwork telephone routing to the county 911 centers.  Oops. http://sites.google.com/site/mnsclec/index

Wonder what else the feds can screw up.

I’ve caught some hype about new versions of the windows mobile apps coming out this week, so I decided to check it out.  I was completely underwhelmed. 

The servers are dead slow, they’re full of popups, and it basically boils down to two pages that say “download now!” that direct to each other.  There’s no actual download.

Don’t believe the hype, this one is a fail.

Oh yeah – I actually paid for a throwaway phone number to feed into the web site (really, what kind of idiot puts their personal cell number in random web sites?) … and the sms never came.

SB 1062 is up for hearing tomorrow.  This proposed legislation would allow commercial breweries to sell beer on their premises for off- and on-premises consumption.

Make sure your support of this legislation is fresh in the mind of your house representative.  If you’re not sure who represents you, look them up.  It wouldn’t hurt to notify your senator of your support of SB 754 either, though it’s not scheduled for action yet.

Originally Posted by Dr. Mike

Because he's too good. Too honest. Too up-front. Too .. correct.
People can't handle it. Americans love drama ... and Ron Paul = everything would go smoothly = no drama. Our government has become a mockery at this point ... it's just another dumb reality TV show, except it's airing on CNN and Fox News.

Yeah, ambien.  Apparently I was still talking to people after I fell asleep.  Sorry about that.  I’ve been having coughing fits and not sleeping well, and I needed to be up early in the morning so I guess I had a good reason to take one.  I’m going to get some serious natural sleep in tonight, though, I tell you what.

The fog cover from my office is awesome.

I’m coughing up fluid.  That implies pneumonia, but the chest wall pains and crunchy upper respiratory system indicate bronchitis. Whatever it is, I’m getting over it already.  I hope this keeps up.  I’m ready to stop coughing.

I’m taking the chance to explore some of the new features, and plugins for desktop apps.