Under pressure from the F.C.C., Verizon Wireless has now admitted that it incorrectly billed 15 million customers between $2 and $6, on average, for data services they didn’t use. Apparently, Verizon’s phones are built in such a way that it is easy for customers to accidentally press the button that…
I have really been enjoying the cool mornings this week. The weather prognosticators are promising more of the same for the next week...We even hit a low of 59° yesterday morning just as the sun came up...Nice. It has been great sitting out with my first cup as the sun comes up each day.…
The weather prognosticators made the promise last week...The weather station above the microwave this morning gave truth to their predictions with a reading of 66°. The air on the front porch gave promise of better days coming soon. Even before the sunbeams found the highest branches, the cool north breeze danced lightly through…
I just stumbled across this from Lyle's Facebook page...I have to say, the quality of the recordings are mind blowing...If you like Lyle's music, you'll love these...Have a listen. Pantry Natural Forces The Interview
Sitting out on the porch with my morning coffee was a change of pace today. All of the rain we have been having makes it look and feel like spring not fall. It must have already rained a bit this morning because the trees are still dripping. The sun coming…
Fall Is In The Air This morning lightened on a world where the temperature had fallen below 70° for the first time in months and months. It wont last, this preview of fall...But, oh how nice it is. Unfortunately, the rains from last week have finally hatched up a swarm of mosquitoes. Therefore,…
Sitting out on the front porch these past two weeks I've begun to notice the look of fall every morning. Sadly, so far at least, it's just a look...Not a feel. And truthfully, the look lasts all day...Most days anyway. I'm sure you've noticed it yourself. It's that hazy, near…
Sometimes it seems like summer will never end here along the Texas coast. Yesterday afternoon the temperature was pushing 97° according to the weather station on the mantle. I checked with the WunderGround and the heat index was almost at 110°. For the last few weeks I have been spending the early…
I have found myself swamped with a lack of umph these past few weeks. The heat and humidity of a SE Texas August has me spending all of my time just trying to stay cool... I have been stuck in a procrastinating mode for days and days and days. I watch the…
Every time one of us would walk outside today we would come back in and moan about how hot it is outside...Little did we realize. We did a run to wally-mart earlier today and the thermometer in the Subaru said the parking lot was registering 104° as we left at…
Every time I hear this lady sing I wonder where I was all her life...Have a listen. I am...Again
This hour, with Bill McKibben, we seek perspective, both factual and moral, on human responsibility in a changing natural world. McKibben wrote The End of Nature, the first book on climate change for a general readership, in 1989. "Only in the disappearance of nature as we have known it," he…
Down here on the Texas Gulf Coast summer this year has been stranger than most we've seen lately. Most years, at lest here lately, by early August the predominate color around these parts has gone from green to browns. Usually as the heat of summer sears everything into dormancy the…
I caught Leon Hales latest in my feed reader last week and thought he had a lot of good points. After spending a quarter of a century posting columns from the porch of his place in Winedale, Leon Hale has come to some conclusions about the joys of a second home…
After finally seeing a lessening of the attacks by the marauding blood suckers the weather has decided to return to the unstable side of the summer pattern. Thunderstorms crossing the landscape like huge sailing ships of old. At times you might think you were watching Titanic battles playing out in…
Los Angeles, California CNN -- Rick Norsigians hobby of picking through piles of unwanted items at garage sales in search of antiques has paid off for the Fresno, California, painter. Two small boxes he bought 10 years ago for $45 -- negotiated down from $70 -- are now estimated to…
Kodachrome - Paul Simon - Momma Don't Take My Kodachrome Away - Click here for more amazing videos PARSONS — Freelance photojournalist Steve McCurry, whose work has graced the pages of National Geographic, laid 36 slides representing the last frames of Kodachrome film on the light board sitting on a…
Do yourself a favor and watch it in HD. Then go ahead and watch the video on the making of the "Walk". Here is the map. Thanks to Cali Lewis for the link to the video.
Lila Kerr was drawing her own blood and handing it over to a room full of health directors in Yatzaputzan, a village in the Ecuadorian Andes, as they prepared to test out a portable centrifuge created by a team of Rice University undergraduates. The anticipation was high as they pushed…
...Just have someone with your name hit the Today Show. I was checking my email a few minutes ago and I saw I had a couple of comments over at Gary-Boyd.com that had eluded the spam filter. So off I went to see what was said and to make sure…
If it seems like I've vanished from the face of the world here lately, it's mostly because I have. At least the face of this world. I've been spending my time for the last two weeks lost in the world created by Stieg Larsson. It seems I finally made the mistake of…
A couple of weeks ago, I walked along a spring creek in the upper Madison Valley, just south of the town of Ennis, Mont. As my guide, Jeff Laszlo, explained, the creek is one of the unnamed tributaries of the Madison River, fed by innumerable springs along the valley’s rich…
After a couple of days of semi-sunny, completely muggy, stay inside weekend days followed by a clear hot Monday we went straight to more rainy muggy days. Tropical moisture has flowed up over the coast to our south now for days. The puddles from last week hadn't even drained to mud, much less dried,…
Hurricane Alex may have missed us but it's been raining all week. I have discovered that if I plug my computer feed into the plasma in the kitchen where I sit at the table all day working on my sites, that I can keep the Wundermap from the Weather Underground…
The entire (well mostly anyway) reason for our jaunt up the road to the middle of the country wasn't to see the famous Arch. It wasn't to celebrate history. It wasn't even to find a cooler climate, though, that seemed to happen on the one day that mattered. The reason for the trip was to visit the special facility the citizens of St. Louis had built for the simple pleasure of watching the summertime antics of a flock of red birds. Cardinals of the subspecies Americanis baseballus St. Louis.
A cool front was moving through the area as I watched that morning. The day promised to be pleasantly warm and not as uncomfortably hot as it had been all week.
We headed north out of Houston on Tuesday before the sun came up and hit Oklahoma soon after noon. I had routed our trip to take advantage of the Arkansas Mountains...We had reservations at Queen Wilhelmena State Park for the first night of our travels.
The Yard The rains last week had me cruising around on Monday for most of the day. I was flying formation with squadrons of dragonflies as I made my rounds on the Deere...The summer numbers are here at last. There must have been a couple of thousand of the flying…
Thunderstorms and Heat The week started off with thunderstorms rolling through the area...Lights were blinking, internet connectivity was problematic at best but we kept on keeping on. Wednesday's storms missed us and by Thursday we were into the "Heat" part of the week. What I mean by heat is that…
