Get up offa that thing and dance till you got power!

Well I don’t have power, but I do have internet access. Wilma was kind to my house and my family. Lost a fence, major pool debris, lost a portion of baby gate fencing, lock broke off on a different fence, and lost some trees. We were fully prepared with supplies ranging from food and water to baby supplies. Our car’s gas tanks were filled to capacity before the storm and this turned out to be a real life saver.

The biggest and most important item after a hurricane is gas. Second would be cash. This list is for able bodied people though. You can take care of everything if you have gas and cash.

A gas station near my house had an 8 hour gas line. I saw national news trucks reporting, so you might have seen them on tv at this 4 pump Hess station working off a generator.

I’m going to just come right out with this prediction that at least 45% of the trees in Broward County fell over outright and at least 75-80% of trees were severly damaged. The tree damage is unbelievable.

Going to the grocery store as well as other stores was kinda surreal. No lights and people didn’t stick to their traditional “grocery store patterns.” It was an observers paradise.

I want to thank all the power companies who have lent South Florida their manpower and trucks. I don’t know who they are except Pike electric. I seem to see their trucks everywhere and I do know some Canadian power company is also pitching in from a news blip I caught on tv.

Power is so important that I wish it wasn’t.

electricity, hurricane wilma, power, south florida

If I don’t post for awhile it will be because I lost power, not because I don’t love you, despite what you’ve heard.

I have a feeling that when Wilma hits the west coast of Florida it will drop to a CAT 1 or really low CAT 2. Its about a 1 hour drive from the east coast to the west coast. Thats alot of land for this storm to cover so I’m expecting a significant decrease in wind speed and severity.

The news services always play the safe side and says the worst is happening, however, I’ve lived here all my life and probably have watched over 4 gazillions hours of storm tracking. Thats 3.9 gazillion more hours than the weather man they just picked up from Omaha, Nebraska.

Steel shutters are a pain in the ass, I gotta get the accordion shutters instead. If my roof blows off, I can always drive somewhere safer, but I don’t want to forget my newly purchased Belgian Beers. So those will be coming with me.

I picked up a Grundig Emergency Radio from RadioShack in case the power goes out. Its got a rechargeable power crank. So this radio and my Belgian beers will go with me if I have to run.

*Note I had to use MSPAINT, lol. Laptop usage.

hurricane wilma, hurricane, weather

I was watching Mad Money, Jim Cramer’s show not too long ago, Google’s stock price was around the $300 dollar level. Jim Cramer was calling for a price target of $350.

We came close to that price today at the highs.

I have every confidence that GOOG will hit those extra 4 bucks. Cramer is close to Calling It.

Pittsburgh is a wet sponge or at least it is on weekdays where its population soars. Then after 5pm and the weekends that sponge is rung dry.

In a growing urbanization trend sweeping cities across America, many people are enjoying the exciting life of living downtown. Is Pittsburgh one these cities? No, but the data is interesting. The two articles demonstrate the differences between the choices made of each cities population. Some choose the life of suburbia while others are dumping suburbia for downtown living.

This trend is still strong all along South Florida’s eastern shores for living in the up and coming city life.

Interesting demographic data for the City of Pittsburgh.

A parrot in quarantine was found to have Avian Bird Flu which came from South America and died in quarantine.

Cats used to detect Bird Flu

My cat will save me

Well I Called It and I forgot that I Called It too.

If you took my advice on 4-30-2005 that the stock market was at a bottom then you made some nice money.

I think we are about to rally again.

stock market, trading, investing, business,yahoo,google,markets,investment,finance

I Called It. On 6-4-2003, I said, “Is Martha’s Business doomed since it relies almost entirely on her image? I don’t think so. The stock price was actually up today on news of the indictment. Probably because this incident is behind them.” ICI frequenter, Meliz, also agreed.

Martha Stewart Post

MSO Martha Stewart’s Omnimedia stock price has doubled in price. The chart looks poised to go higher today.

The Apprentice part deux, Martha Stewart’s version, is following the same hyper promo format as The Original Apprentice with Donald Trump, where every week the groups were promoting some asset of Donald Trump (see Trump Ice).

This season they get to promote Martha Related stuff. Personally I think the Martha Stewart Loft is cooler. That view with the wall of windows is quite nice.
martha stewart, apprentice, donald trump, mso, omnimedia

Lets get hypothetical.

Are you going to be upset if there is no heaven?

Assumptions:
Lets say you die.
You believe there is some sort of an after life.
You have 5 seconds of conciousness after you’ve died.
Once those 5 seconds are over you’re done. No more after life.

Questions:
Are you going to be pissed off?
Would you have lived your life differently?

life, death, after life, religion

Post your comments here

This is a year of freak weather and is telling us that we are fugging up our planet with all the variety of gases caused by man made objects.

The most comprehensive climate model to date of the continental United States predicts more extreme temperatures throughout the country and more extreme precipitation along the Gulf Coast, in the Pacific Northwest and east of the Mississippi.

Similarly, the continental United States will experience an overall warming trend: Temperatures now experienced during the coldest two weeks of the year will be a past memory, and winter’s length will diminish as well, according to the model.

The model, Diffenbaugh said, assumes that greenhouse gases will attain a concentration more than twice their current levels, but he said he is confident that the model’s performance gives as accurate a picture of the future as we can hope for at the moment.

“We checked our model’s performance by analyzing the period from 1961 to 1985 for which, of course, we do not need a prediction,” Diffenbaugh said. “The model performed admirably, which tells us we’ve got a good understanding of how to represent the physical world in terms of computer code. It’s certainly not perfect, but we’ll need a computer at least 100 times as powerful as the cluster we used to really improve the accuracy. We would like to have access to such computing power in the future.”

Source

This comes the day before the STRONGEST HURRICANE ON RECORD formed in the Atlantic basin.

hurricane wilma, climate, weather, hurricanes, weather predictions

A new study shows that 20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities.

The study, which is reported this week in the journal Science, is the first time that a detailed map has been created to match patents to specific physical locations on the human genome.

Researchers can patent genes because they are potentially valuable research tools, useful in diagnostic tests or to discover and produce new drugs.

“It might come as a surprise to many people that in the U.S. patent system human DNA is treated like other natural chemical products,” said Fiona Murray, a business and science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and a co-author of the study.

“An isolated DNA sequence can be patented in the same manner that a new medicine, purified from a plant, could be patented if an inventor identifies a [new] application.”

Source: National Geographic

Could the open source way be applied to testing human genes?

Required assumptions for this hypothetical:
-Cheap effecient ways of researching and testing (much like using linux to create a webserver on your old 486 back in 1998)
-Abolishment of gene patents
-Highly educated individuals from around the globe interested in researching these genes

Questions:
-Will this happen in the future?
-What other obstacles face open sourcing gene research?
-If this will happen, when?

open source, genes, human genome, biotechnology