We reached home, only a bit late
Just a few hours late, we were rushed home on Air Jamaica. They held the flight for us. It was relatively painless. We are most pleased. Hooray hooray.
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Just a few hours late, we were rushed home on Air Jamaica. They held the flight for us. It was relatively painless. We are most pleased. Hooray hooray.
Once again this year, Bonaire was a fantastic vacation. Poor Wessiepooh destressed a little bit, making it possible for him to breathe that little bit easier. I had a great time diving, and learning more about how to shoot video from Hendrik Wyuts, a Dutch videographer I met 10 years ago when he taped our crazy little group during my first real dive trip. Two classes with him and I was ready to take over the world. We'll see whether the videos improve when I get a new camera.
It was great to see old friends again, even though some had moved to other jobs. Karen who fed the kittys and took care of their medical needs was no longer at Habitat. Ernst the sometimes grumpy German photo shop manager had retired back to his catamaran just off the shore at Habitat. Wilco was still as Wilco as ever. Netto was still finding strange and unique underwater creatures. All else was pretty much as we left it.
Bonaire is still the perfect place for diving. We didn't bring our still cameras this time due to the extra weight and the desire to take a bit of a break. The gear brings our baggage totals to about 120 lbs each. Wes didn't feel much like shooting anyway (although I think he regretted that choice later in the trip). I shot a lot of videos that are now all up happily at http://web.mac.com/mikkibarry and there will be more when I have time to put everything onto Final Cut HD so I can find some more creative ways to edit the 'good stuff." More on that later.
Right now, we're just sitting here in this wonderfully crowded departure lounge in Bonaire, waiting for perhaps some word on our friends from Air Jamaica and wondering when we're actually going to take off for Montego Bay, and whether or not we are actually going to reach home at some point today. Wouldn't it be nice to find out?
"No problem, mon" is Jamaica's unofficial slogan. Seems that nobody bothered to tell their national carrier, Air Jamaica. You really kinda know when you book Air Jamaica to Bonaire that it is indeed possible that things are not going to go quite right. In the "olden days" AJ would indeed hold flights for later connections coming in from the US to Montego Bay so that they could catch their Bonaire connections. But apparently, that doesn't work the same way anymore. Our friends were stranded the last time they tried that connection, and had to go back to Miami to catch another flight to Bonaire, as AJ flies to Bonaire only once a week these days.
Our connection down here was flawless. They held the Bonaire flight the few minutes it would take to get us on board before we winged off to Bonaire, arriving a few minutes early. Poetry in motion even. We got there early enough to purchase our upgrades, and all was perfect. On our way home, however, things immediately started looking not so wonderful when we found that the island's Internet service was basically not working, then we found that even worse, all of AJ's computers across the Caribbean were out of service. This made it necessary for the poor contractors behind the counter to have to hand write everything including boarding passes. So they decided they were not going to let us buy upgrades, and otherwise caused mass annoyance as we were not allowed into the air conditioned departure lounge until we had real boarding passes, which couldn't be provided until they called Montego Bay and then got what seats were available and blah blah blah. When we finally got into the air conditioning, things were much better, albeit crowded. Our flight was scheduled to board at 2, take off at 3. It is now 3:05 and the inbound has not yet arrived, and nobody seems to have any word on whether it is going to, so there you have it.
So why do we fly Air Jamaica with its spotty service? Because our alternatives are not fantastic. AJ goes BWI to Mobay to Bonaire. We CAN take American, which would go Dulles to Puerto Rico, 9 hour layover, then Eagle to Bonaire, arriving in the evening. Departure back to the US is at some ungodly hour like 6 am, with another 9 hour layover in Puerto Rico. The Dash 8s that Eagle flies are literally painful because the seat pitch is rather crappy. They are also rather expensive, Puerto Rico is really horrible, and 9 hours is a very long time. Other options are Dulles to Newark, Newark to Bonaire on Continental, with an arrival sometime around 4:30 AM. We don't know what the flight back is like. They also have an overnight flight from Houston. Not sure about the layovers, or the connectivity time, but I'm told that the seat pitch of the Continental Jets is not much better than the Eagle Dash 8, and the cabin service apparently is horrible.
As I look up here at 10 past 3, KLM has landed another MD11 and has offload ALL of its passengers into the tiny departure lounge It's starting to get pretty hot and stuffy. Wonder when any updates will come.
We are scheduled to go home on Saturday. We have been kept busy busy diving several times per day, hanging out on fun dive boats with fun people doing fun things. We also have many more lovely dive videos. They have been placed on a link off of my .mac site which should make it very easy for everyone to find should they so desire. Check out this handy link.
Well, we had a bit of wet string upload time on our hands, so we put up some photos taken with a funny point and shoot, and some videos hosted right here at home. Constructive comments are very desired and welcomed. Please feel free to have a look at this handy link
We are having a wonderful time in Bonaire, after a relatively painless trip via Air Jamaica (when it works, it works well. When it doesn't... well....). We are at Captain Don's which had advertised many innovations. In truth, the only thing new we found were hair dryers and new safes :-). Some of the old dive staff had changes, which was sad because we really liked Karen and Ernst, but Wilco, Netto, Chris, and some of the others are still here. Crazy Sherman had left awhile before.
The diving (the most important part of the trip, of course) has been Bonaire perfect. Today we saw the first shark we had seen in 11 years of trips to Bonaire. Only about 2 feet long, black tip reef shark, which I didn't get on video very well, but really DID see. Woo hoo.
Hopefully the fish tanks, the doggies, the birdies, the kitties, and everything else are fine as we continue to have fun here. Email is spotty here, but we will keep trying. The advertised "wireless access" only works in a few areas, and it's pretty weak when it does work.... so there you go. Party on.
IOL: Muggers pick wrong victim:
Germany - Three teenage thugs ended up in hospital after trying to steal a junior kick-boxing and karate champ's mobile phone.
The trio, all aged 17, cornered Pauli Borchardt, also 17, as he made his way home from a friend's house in Hamburg, Germany.
After refusing to hand over his mobile phone, which he was using at the time to call his brother, the trio tried to take it by force.
But the amateur kick-boxing and karate champ floored all three of them before making it to his home on the same street.
One of the thugs was kept in hospital after a passer-by spotted them on the ground and called an ambulance. The other two were released after being treated for cuts and bruises.
Police, who initially went to arrest Borchardt after the trio told them a gang of lads led by the 17-year-old had attacked them with baseball bats, were soon put straight and are now investigating the three on suspicion of attempted robbery. - Ananova.com
Airport Passengers Might Have Their Data Searched:
Professor Orin Kerr notes that the Federal Government has been using recent Fourth Amendment decisions to justify searching travelers' laptops at airports. These searches, which recently incriminated an airline traveler on child sex charges, claim justification under recent Fourth, Fifth...
Virginia Court Takes Aim At Spammers:
The Virginia Court of Appeals has upheld what is believed to be the first felony conviction under a state anti-spam law. In reaching this holding, the court not only rejected claims that Virginia's anti-spam law is unconstitutional under the First...
A sign of the Court's growing conservative bent?
Supreme Court Clerkships and Women's Opportunity:
By Emma Coleman Jordan Today's NYT provides a look at the clerkship hiring records of the Justices. Linda Greenhouse reports that although women represented almost 50% of law school graduates in 2005,only 7 of the 37 clerkships went to women for the 2006-7 term that begins on October 2. The coming term will be the first time since 1994 that the number of women clerks has been in the single digits. In a review of the number of women hired by each Justice in the seven hiring periods since 2000, the Times rank orders the Justices as follows. Breyer 54%Ginsburg...
Father Drinan remains the only Catholic priest elected to Congress. The Pope made him choose between the priesthood and politics. He was a professor at Georgetown Law Center while I was a student, and apparently still is. Go Father Drinan :-)
Privacy: A right to defend - The Boston Globe:
SOMETIMES, AS IN the case of the current domestic surveillance controversy, it's important to take the long view.
It was in 1978 that President Carter persuaded Congress to create a special secret court that would authorize wiretaps or secret surveillance on people suspected of espionage. I was one of the few members of Congress to vote against the measure.
Although little is known about the court that monitors the resulting Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, analysts generally assume that it has achieved its objectives while complying with the Fourth Amendment's requirement that a warrant be issued by a judge before every search and seizure.
After the 9/11 attacks on America in 2001, however, President Bush decided to finesse FISA and collect information from countless people suspected by the spy agencies of being involved in terrorist activities. Three years after this clandestine program was started, the press revealed its existence. Late last week, a federal judge in Detroit, Anna Diggs Taylor, said that the president's move to bypass FISA was unconstitutional. Still, the president remains adamant that the plan is essential and that it is justified by his broad inherent powers as commander in chief.
A wing and a prayer:
by Brian Whitaker
Planes are kept aloft by aerodynamics, not divine intervention. I have often travelled on planes next to Christians who crossed themselves or Muslims who whispered a prayer before take-off. It happens in all faiths, so the reaction of a Canadian airline to a Jewish man who prayed in his seat seems both bizarre and insensitive: he was thrown off the plane.
"He was clearly a Hasidic Jew," said Yves Faguy, a passenger seated nearby. "He had some sort of cover over his head. He was reading from a book. "He wasn't exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth," Faguy added. The action didn't seem to bother anyone, Faguy said, but a flight attendant approached the man and told him his praying was making other passengers nervous. "The attendant actually recognised out loud that he wasn't a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave," Faguy said.
A spokeswoman for the airline, Air Canada Jazz, said later there had been more than one complaint about the man's behaviour and that the crew had acted "in the interest of the majority of passengers". Whether the passengers' alleged nervousness had anything to do with terrorism is unclear - though Jazz does seem extremely hot on security. So much so that one of its pilots was locked out of his own cockpit last month after going to the toilet.
Ok, the title of this rant may kinda tweak some people, in that some feel that anti growth is always a good thing, but my argument is that there are ways to accomplish the goals you seek, and ways that do nothing but throw roadblocks in front of people for no good reason. Take, for example, my town of Great Falls.
Great Falls is an eclectic community, tucked out in the woods approximately 15 miles from Georgetown. My home is close to the Great Falls National Park, an unspoiled (mostly) gem on the banks of the Potomac, heavily wooded, and full of trails, animals, plant life, etc. Many of those who live here, live in Great Falls because of the rural quality of the area, added to a relative ease in commuting (for whatever can be easy commuting in this ridiculously overcrowded and traffic filled nightmare of an area). Most of the lots here are large, over 2 acres at least, housing horses, gardens, trees, etc.
There are many of us here in Great Falls who do not wish to see developers come in here and carve up 5 acre lots into 4 homes per acre parcels of McMansions. To me, there is a simple way to do this - convince the County of Farifax who controls the zoning of this little piece of paradise, to just say NO to lot sizes smaller than say, 1 to 2 acres. But that's not what they're doing.... Instead, they've decided to prohibit public water and sewer hook ups in most areas of the town except for highly critical areas like the elementary schools, fire station, etc.
So, thinking on a highly personal level, how does this affect me? Glad you asked. Today we once again replaced a well pump. Seems that my water is so corrosive that it ate through the casing of a well pump that was supposed to last at least 20 years in 3. This means that the boys from Bell Pump and Well drive out here, haul a pump up 200 feet from the water source, and put in a new one. This means that the resulting sludge and crud that wind up in our household water system has to be flushed out after 24 hours of no water. Ok, that just sucks. Good thing we don't DRINK that stuff.
Fairfax County, you listening? Change the zoning out here and run the water pipes. I'm tired of paying huge amounts of money for water softeners, filters, pumps, backwashers, etc. etc. worrying about the effect of this water on my indoor pipes, AND the septic system. Perhaps it's time for Great Falls to enter the 21st century. *ARGH*
Yes, I'm still having a wonderful time playing with my salt water fishies. During our trials and tribulations, we have noticed that the learning curve is quite steep. Wes has jumped in with both feet, almost literally, playing with the plumbing, installation of UV filtration, building a refugium, drilling the tank with fish still in it, having an interesting time with sumps and floods etc. etc.
You can see the lovely tank and the blog of all the fun involved therewith (had to use at least one silly word in this post, eh?) at this handy link and you can see a real live REEFCAM right here at this fun link. It takes a few minutes for the reefcam to come up since it's a java thing, but it's better than yahoo's really crappy webcam stuff.
SubGenii challenge Hollywood cranks:
United States: The Church of the SubGenius has issued a press release declaring they are the loopiest of all the cults:
Tom Cruise is pitching for Scientology; Madonna sings the praises of Kabbalah. Strange religious groups (or cults) are in vogue in today's Hollywood. But when it comes to bizarre rituals and crackpot beliefs, even Scientology can't hold a candle to the Church of the SubGenius, a new religious movement set to take Hollywood by storm.
The Church of the SubGenius is a popular organization often seen as aparodyof religious cults, including Scientology, the Raelians, the Unification Church, and racist hate groups such as Christian Identity. The organization is widely seen as a satire that mocks organized religion, or as the church describes itself,a cynisacreligion.It was founded in 1953 by a mysterious figure named J.R.BobDobbs, whose smiling, pipe-smoking image has been seen worldwide in chip art, graffiti, tattoos, and rock albums from performers ranging from Devo and George Clinton to Sublime.
A number of celebrities are SubGenius ministers, including former Talking Heads singer David Byrne, Penn Jillette, Robert Anton Wilson, and Pee-Wee Herman. A number of comic book artists praise the group's teachings, including legendary "underground" artists Robert Crumb and Paul Mavrides, along with Bob Burden (whose works were recently adapted into the motion pictureMystery Men). Mavrides was art director of the 1999 documentaryGrass,whichy featured Woody Harrelson and many other celebrities.
In an interview with CNN, Church business manager Reverend Ivan Stang said,We're probably the only cult that admits we're ripping them off every day, and teaching them to enjoy it.
firstamendmentcenter.org: commentary:
Caught in the crossfire of culture-war battles over religion and politics, most Americans may be ready to say “a plague on both your houses.”
At least that’s one way to read a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and released Aug. 24.
According to the survey, nearly half of Americans (49%) believe conservative Christians have gone too far in trying to impose their religious values on the country. At the same time, 69% think liberals have gone too far in trying to keep religion out of schools and government.
Though most Americans are religious (and most think religious influence on our society is a good thing), few identify with religious political movements on the left or right. Only 7% call themselves members of the "religious left," and only 11% say they belong to the "religious right."
Canadian pilot's toilet drama:
Passengers on a Canadian plane had an unsettling in-flight experience after the pilot found himself locked out of the cockpit after a trip to the toilet. Instead of slipping back inside, the Air Canada Jazz pilot was seen banging on the door and talking to his first officer on an internal phone. Crew members were forced to take the door off its hinges to let him back in. An airline spokeswoman said the first officer could have landed the flight by himself, and there had been no danger. The incident happened on an internal flight from the Canadian capital Ottawa to Winnipeg, Manitoba. The pilot went to use the toilet at the back of the Bombardier CRJ-100 plane, which carries about 50 passengers, with about 30 minutes of the flight left to go.