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THE LAND OF ALEXANDER BLOG
Welcome To The Blog Of Lewis Alexander
Wednesday, August 31, 2005Red Cross Donation Sticky PostIf you would like to make a donation to the Red Cross to help in disaster relief for Hurricane Katrina, you can do so from their website. Further instructions can be found on their page. I will leave this post at the top for a little while. New posts will follow this one. posted @ 11:42 PM CDT [link] The Storm Heard 'Round The World High Gas Prices.... Oil Futures.... Energy Crisis.... I just went out to get some unleaded gasoline for my lawn mower this evening. It is the 2nd time this summer I have had to do so. I have a small yard, and my mower gets good gas milage I guess. I paid $3.19 a gallon. It could be worse. (but can't you always say that?) I've seen pictures of gas stations down south that say almost $6 a gallon. The human suffering down in Louisiana and Mississippi is unimaginable. That much we know for sure. Dateline NBC certainly made sure its viewers are aware, as they gave a very difficult report of the suffering and deteriorating conditions. If you didn't catch Dateline, the one big thing you might have noticed since the hurricane is the jump in the price of a gallon of gas. The gulf coast oil production and refining took a big hit from this storm. Now there is talk of an energy crisis around the globe from this storm. The rising cost of fuel in the U.S. will surely cause more competition for already limited refinery products around the world. Wait a minute. Limited refinery products?? Why aren't there more refineries? Why are we still so dependent on oil if we aren't willing to produce the hell out of it? Nuclear Power is safe. There is also hydro-electric power, and wind farms. While Katrina was a big storm - one of the biggest - why are we in the position where one storm can cause a WORLD ENERGY CRISIS? Politicians and tree huggers everywhere are mobilizing to fully exploit this storm as well. Jacob, from The Flatiron Life, first led me to James K. Glassman's column he wrote blasting these exploiters that claim Katrina is directly the result of human-caused Global Warming and that the current administration is directly to blame for this. The "Global Warming Alarmists" need to get a clue. They are just jumping on the "blame America first" bandwagon that is circling the globe. As the world's lone superpower, we are expected to both butt out of foreign affairs, and police/repair things around the world. I'm sorry, but we let the Terrorists bring the fight to America too much already. I say continue to bring the fight to them, away from American civilians and property. I say help the Iraqis start the democratic process. (It worked out for Japan and Germany didn't it?) I say lets tap into the vast regions of oil we have here in our country and develop a more robust refining capacity. I'm all for alternative energy if it is feasible, which is why I will mention nuclear energy. I'm not saying convert everything to Nuclear, but it is there, why not use it more? I think one lesson that should come out of this disaster is that we need a diverse, robust, and aggressive U.S. energy policy. The modern world is built on energy, and it has been taken for granted far too long. posted @ 11:32 PM CDT [link] Tuesday, August 30, 2005DestructionThe devastation Hurricane Katrina has brought to Louisiana and Mississippi is unimaginable. Here are some links to read about the disaster. USA Today link CNN Story Yahoo News Story WGN News at Noon was mostly dedicated to Hurricane Coverage. The rain is covering the southern half of Indiana right now. Here is a view of the RADAR as of 1245 Eastern Time.  The threat for the midwest is in the form of rain, and risk of tornado. Millions of Louisiana and Mississippi residents are without power, and may be for weeks and months. (I think we were out of power for a month after Hugo in '89) People are still trapped on the roofs of their homes, cars, buildings. The levee protecting New Orleans broke and lake water is rushing into the town. The water is not safe to drink, and food is hard to come by. If you would like to make a donation to the Red Cross to help in disaster relief for Hurricane Katrina, you can do so from their website, either online, or by phone. Further instructions can be found on their page. posted @ 01:09 PM CDT [link] Monday, August 29, 2005Some More NewsI was going to have something cool to post with today. However, I got sleepy and have decided to try and sum up some news in my own words. Please consult your nearest news source for the facts, and reference for what I sum up here. Lets see... I believe the hurricane made landfall this morning around 6am CDT just east of New Orleans, sparing that vulnerable city from the absolute worst of the storm. Make no mistake though, this was still a major storm. I think I heard that it weakened slightly before landfall, but still a monster of a storm. There is still flooding, lots of damage, power outages, and more rainfall. Last figure I heard was 55+ dead in Mississippi. I half-listened to a news story about the Red Cross mobilizing to go in immediately after the storm to help those affected by the disaster. The Storm has caused another splash in the world of Oil. Oil futures hit $70 a barrel briefly before coming slightly down. Oil refining on the Gulf coast was halted in advance of the storm, which will likely cause a spike in gas prices. OPEC countries are considering boosting output to help ease the impact of the storm, and President Bush is considering tapping the Strategic Oil Reserves. I thought he was supposed to make a decision on the today, but I haven't heard anything yet. There was an explosion in, I think it was Fairmount, Saturday evening at a residence that killed one person. The cause is still under investigation. The last time I heard of houses exploding like that was when I lived in Lafayette. A Construction crew was drilling under a roadway and hit a gas main. The gas seeped underground into homes and caused several to suddenly explode. I believe no one was hurt in those, partly because I don't think the houses caught fire, they just exploded. This house in Fairmount exploded in flames and burned from what I understand. I'm not saying they are similar in cause, just something I remember. Oh yeah, big story. The brakes in my sisters car aren't doing so well. We drove it to Macomb to visit some friends for an evening. When we left the next morning, she had no brake fluid. We had checked it prior to the trip so something had gone wrong. We later found that brake fluid was spraying out near her front tire at every press of the brake pedal. We made the 3 hour journey home like that, spraying brake fluid all across Illinois (because we kept buying more and putting it in.) I read a lot more news today, but sleep is beckoning, and messing with my brain. I'm just going to turn in. Here is a random link to a page that shows my desktop backgrounds on my computer. Just random if you wanna see. I won't give any names, but I am absolutely in love with one of them. No details. Gotta go! See My Desktop Backgrounds posted @ 11:50 PM CDT [link] Sunday, August 28, 2005Katrina Approaches Gulf CoastThis hurricane is no joke. After it hit Florida as a relatively minor hurricane, Katrina has grown into a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane and is approaching the coast of Louisiana.  Hurricanes are what got me interested in Meteorology as a child. After surviving a Category 4 hurricane in 1989, I began reading everything I could on the subject. While it is not a career pursuit anymore, it is still an interesting hobby of mine. Not hurricanes, but meteorology in general. Here are some links I stole off of the Drudge Report. Storm Track Wind Zones Latest from Satellite New Orleans RADAR posted @ 02:47 PM CDT [link] Saturday, August 27, 2005PR Machine funding Cindy SheehanRead this about the Liberal Machine that is funding the Cindy Sheehan media frenzy. The counter, Conservative machine is gearing up to grab its own piece of the action. Too bad for Cindy, her message is lost in the frenzy of the hate bush liberal desperation. I don't think she would be so objectionable if it weren't for this. It's one thing for people to support her, but another to be funded by liberal hate groups; especially an organization like Moveon.org, the mouthpiece for fat bastard Micheal Moore. I'm sorry about the fat bastard comment, but the absolute hatred that he emits in everything he does does nothing but show the world how extreme his isolationist, anti-semetic, anti-american rhetoric is. If he wasn't so dishonest, he would have maybe a shred of credibility with anyone even remotely important. On a side note, I saw the cops in Oakwood take someone down. It was a scene right out of COPS. The guy seemed like he was on drugs. It was a good time. posted @ 02:30 AM CDT [link] Thursday, August 25, 2005It Is Happening!It has been done. A house has been located! My good friend Clint, who has been looking to purchase his first house, has found one to his liking. The intent being, he would buy a big house, and I and my current co-habitant would move in with him. The search ended last weekend with another tour of the house. This time with more people in tow. It is a 3-bedroom, 3-bath, 2 story house with a finished basement, 2 kitchens, a large well-built back porch with solid roof/overhang, a decent sized yard, large 2 car garage, like-new blacktop driveway that is just inside Danville city limits, yet heading out of town so it doesn't have the crowded-in-town-neighborhood feel. The inside of this house is in perfect shape. The current owners didn't use the kitchen on the main floor very much, so it has no wear-and-tear. (They used the kitchen in the basement.) There is a large, full bathroom on each level of the house. The 2nd floor consists of the two bedrooms, and a bathroom. The first floor has the entry-way, large living room-dining-kitchen area, with a full living room off to the side. The master bedroom and a bathroom are on the first floor, as is the laundry area leading to the back porch area. The basement has another full kitchen/dining area, full bathroom, and living room. I believe the only bad thing is the choice of carpet colors. The carpet is in perfect shape, however, the color is not to our liking, and the upstairs kitchen is carpeted. Clint plans to take care of that almost first thing. This week we looked into the loan process, and Clint has been approved. The owners have taken the house off the market, and have started the closing process. In a few weeks, the house will be ours for the living. All this, as I am about to start my new job with Walgreens, and my sister is turning 21; should make for an interesting and exciting month of September. posted @ 12:19 AM CDT [link] Saturday, August 20, 2005Away With Blogger!Hello! You should have been redirected here with no problem. I have now broken free from the evil Blogger.com service! If you have a website and link to my blog, please change your links to point to http://blog.landofalexander.com/ This was not a change that was done lightly. Plenty of man hours went into making this happen. You should find the usual links to the right in the sidebar, plus a few new ones. I saved all the posts from my previous Blogspot blog into one page that can be accessed from the sidebar. ALL posts are on ONE page so if you are looking for something from the past, please do a CTRL-F and use find. Below the navigational links (My website, Blog Home, Archives, Email) you will find my regular links. Below those you will find my donation button should, for some reason, anyone want to send me money, they can do that via PayPal. There are some design things I am still doing to this page, plus there are new features I am still trying to figure out. As you can see, there are many of the posts from Blogger already in this one. I tried to make this as seamless as possible. Remember to check your bookmarks, as they may not point in the right direction anymore. I will leave the redirect up for a couple of weeks, and then once I see everyone is coming in the right way, I will let them go. posted @ 01:18 AM CDT [link] Cindy, The Sad Reality Of Her Political Discourse The following is a column written by Dr. Crouse. From Townhall.com by Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D. The media frenzy surrounding Cindy Sheehan, the woman who lost a son in Iraq, is a prime example of what has gone wrong with 24-hour “news” coverage. The woman is clearly unhinged, and while we need to respect her grief at losing her son, it is now abundantly evident that her campaign has moved beyond her personal loss to her political ideology. It is embarrassing and inhumane for the media to expose this poor women’s unbalanced behavior. Somebody needs to step in to provide her with a quiet place to rest and, one would hope, regain her rationality and emotional balance. It is terribly sad to see the press ¬¬–– bored from a slow-news August and the forced inactivity in Crawford, Texas –– exploit someone who has become a crackpot. Cindy Sheehan’s campaign long ago lost any pretense of being a mother’s grief-stricken reaction to her son’s tragic death. When Sheehan’s 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in Baghdad last year, she founded an antiwar organization called Gold Star Families. Now, she has combined Madison Avenue and K Street by hiring a political consultant, public relations advisors, and establishing a website in an organized effort to keep the cameras on her and her cause. All that high-powered activity is being funded by three major-league, Far Left sponsors –– Moveon.org (notorious for Michael Moore’s efforts to keep the President from being re-elected), TrueMajority (established by the liberal Ben and Jerry’s ice cream dynasty) and Democracy for America –– and seems to be linked to an orchestrated effort to harass and embarrass President Bush. As she has moved from grieving mother to political spokesperson, Mrs. Sheehan has become shrill. She is calling President Bush “the biggest terrorist in the world.” She is accusing the U.S. of waging a “nuclear” war in Iraq. She is even urging the President to send his two “party-animal” daughters into the conflict and she is threatening to impeach everyone in the White House and U.S. military. Those are not rational statements –– especially when accompanied by what news people are kindly calling her “potty mouth.” The woman can spew out foul language and call people names with the best drunken sailor or dock worker. In a blatant contradiction of her major complaint (that Bush hasn’t been willing to meet with her), Sheehan met with the President shortly after her son’s death in April 2004. Afterward, she expressed appreciation for the President’s sympathy. Now she calls him “callous” and says her earlier description of the meeting with the President was colored by her shock and bereavement. Equally sad is the fact that Cindy has not spoken with some members of her family since President Bush was elected President. Her supporters are calling Cindy Sheehan, “the Rosa Parks of the Iraqi War,” while others are describing her as the “face of the anti-war movement.” It is unspeakably sad that a woman who should be grieving the loss of her son has, instead, turned to name-calling and unseemly behavior in an ideological campaign that dishonors the memory of her son and disparages the heroic cause for which he gave his life. And, it is equally sad that the media continue to egg her on. posted @ 12:45 AM CDT [link] Friday, August 19, 2005The Weather AgainCurrent RADAR as of this posting.  posted @ 12:12 AM CDT [link] Thursday, August 18, 2005Cindy Sheehan and Her Political DiatribeListen to what Cindy Sheehan has said. This is copied directly from Drudgereport. Please excuse the profanity, I left the quote intact. "We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We’re waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush!" So declared Cindy Sheehan earlier this year during a rally at San Francisco State University. Sheehan, who is demanding a second meeting with Bush, stated: "We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now." Sheehan unleashed a foul-mouth tirade on April 27, 2005: "They’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites! And we need to, we just need to rise up..." Sheehan said of the Bush administration. "If George Bush believes his rhetoric and his bullshit, that this is a war for freedom and democracy, that he is spreading freedom and democracy, does he think every person he kills makes Iraq more free?" "The whole world is damaged. Our humanity is damaged. If he thinks that it’s so important for Iraq to have a U.S.-imposed sense of freedom and democracy, then he needs to sign up his two little party-animal girls. They need to go to this war." "We want our country back and, if we have to impeach everybody from George Bush down to the person who picks up dog in Washington, we will impeach all those people." Part of the same speech is quoted below.... (one of many sources for this) "'This country is not worth dying for.' If we're attacked, we would all go out. We'd all take whatever we had. I'd take my rolling pin and I'd beat the attackers over the head with it. But we were not attacked by Iraq. We might not even have been attacked by Osama bin Laden if 9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through . . ." Here is my opinion. She is a nut-job and a tool. She is a tool of the radical liberal machine. The insanely liberal media has nothing better to do than report on the radical, politically motivated, heartless, and gutless woman who is using her own son, one of America's heroes who volunteered (we do have an all-volunteer Army correct?) for military service, volunteered to re-enlist after the war started, and volunteered for the rescue mission that ended tragically. She can grieve, she can mourn, she can even question the war and the manner we entered it that got her son killed, but don't become a political tool. Don't lose touch with reality, and your own family, when you climb on a soap-box with conspiracy theories, and hate speech while waving your dead son's picture in the air. Her own family has asked her to stop, and her husband has just filed for divorce. When will she get the hint? This woman has some serious hate issues and needs counseling. I won't pretend to know how she feels, and hope that I am never in a situation where I have lost a child, but that does not give her the right to say the crazy things she says she believes: It is her son, and the men and women who serve in our military that gives her that right. Since we all must endure her hateful rantings via the liberal media, I hope that she is aware of that fact. posted @ 01:01 AM CDT [link] Tuesday, August 16, 2005More ReadingMore to read from Townhall.com posted @ 02:00 PM CDT [link] Saturday, August 13, 2005Read This ArticleRead this article by Mark Alexander. I did not read it just because of his last name. posted @ 02:16 AM CDT [link] Friday, August 12, 2005Look of pageI was able to get my desktop computer to boot finally (don't ask what was wrong) and was able to check out my greymatter page on a normal sized monitor. I was pretty pleased with it. Sometimes it is hard to tell if I have a good layout on my laptop because I have a widescreen on it. I see a lot more of a web page than people without the widescreen. I build all my pages on my laptop so I need to check every once in a while. So I've seen my page in 1280x800 resolution on MSIE 6 and in 1024x768 resolution on Mozilla Firefox 1.0.2. These are the most common resolutions and browsers that navigate my website. If you go anywhere on my website besides my blog, you would benefit from having Java enabled because I use Java hover buttons. The vast majority of people do, but just in case you are having problems with the hover buttons, be sure to check your Java settings. posted @ 01:39 PM CDT [link] UPDATE On My Page Hits Total yesterday after my rash of web surfers was 51 page hits, involving 39 unique users, and 2 returning visitors i.e. people who have been here before. (and I know who you are too!) These stats don't include myself, because I would certainly inflate the number of hits. If you have never been to Statcounter.com, and you have a website and/or blog, I recommend you check it out. posted @ 12:05 PM CDT [link] Thursday, August 11, 2005The Lightning CoreAs you can see from the RADAR below, that was quite a storm that hit Danville. I heard the thunder coming for about 45 minutes before it actually hit. At one point the lightning was so intense and so close, I hid from the windows (something I don't normally do for a storm) and sat in the hallway. I had turned on my scanner just in time to hear a Severe Thunderstorm Warning AND a Tornado Warning for my location. The Dopplar indicated tornado was just south of town. When the rain first started, I saw pea-sized hail coming down. Only briefly though. Then the torrential downpour began. Anyway, the storm passed, and we got some much needed rain. It was an exciting afternoon. posted @ 07:26 PM CDT [link] I do get hits. I've had a sudden rash of hits today from other people with Blogger.com blogs. I have random days where I got 35 or more hits from new people that navigate here from other Blogs. I normally get 5-7 people a day. Half of them seem to be regulars that have visited before, and the rest are random people from search engines that happen to hit upon my site looking for something else. I haven't had that problem in this blog yet though  Here is a snap of the RADAR right before a storm hits.  posted @ 04:52 PM CDT [link] Massive Explosion in Utah A truck carrying exlosives was involved in an accident yesterday on a Utah highway. Minutes later, the truck exploded. The force of the blast removed the asphalt from the road, damaged nearby tracks, and started a fire. The accident is still under investigation. Officials say they hope the road will be repaved and open Thursday night. Read this article about it. posted @ 03:11 PM CDT [link]
Alright! If you are reading this, please note the text at the bottom of each post. It should have the time it was posted, and a thing called 'karma.' There are + and - links by that you can click on. Its a kind of voting system. If you think the post was a good one, and deserves a +, then click on it. If not, click on the - to vote for that. Some Changes and Happenings You may have noticed I have removed the link to my Greymatter blog from pretty much anywhere on my website. I decided it needs some extensive work before I start letting people see it regularly. It is still there though. If you remember the link to where it was, you can still see it. I just won't link to it for a while yet. If you can see it, I've made a lot of changes to it. It's layout should be very familiar. There are still things I am still trying to figure out how to do with it. Although the last 3-5 hours I spent on it tonight have seen significant advances in my knowledge of how to manipulate the templates, and with hexadecimal color codes. In the meantime, I will run both blogs concurrently. What I post on one will be posted on the other. Once I think I am ready, I will make the switch to updating only one. I will try to retain the text of this blog only as an archive, until I decide, "out with the old, in with the new!" One thing that you won't see on my Blogger blog... smilies!! Here are some for ya!                 
posted @ 12:24 AM CDT [link] Wednesday, August 10, 2005UPDATE on Yankee JumperHe was arrested after a short stay at the hospital. Read more about it here. You saw it here first! (ok maybe you didn't, but I posted here about it first!) 
posted @ 05:58 PM CDT [link] |
 My name is Lewis and I spend most of my time on the planet Earth. My Website: The Land of Alexander Blog Home Archives Pre-August '05 Archive News and Opinions: Hawaii Tribune-Herald F.I.R.E. Townhall.com Danville Commercial News Drudgereport Boortz.com The Consumerist Other Links: NWS Dopplar RADARs PCQandA Google Fight! ZDNet Greymatter Manual Donate to me below! Nearby Weather |
