To celebrate our 42nd wedding anniversary we went on a 7-day Caribbean cruise. We chose as our ship the Royal Caribbean International “Rhapsody of the Seas”. This nine-year-old luxury ship is 915 feet in length with 11 decks and comfortably carries almost 2,400 passengers. A crew of 754 men and women from 26 different countries mans the ship. “Rhapsody” is one of about 15 ships operated by Royal Caribbean International.

After dropping our luggage at the ship’s terminal and parking the car in a long term lot we boarded Rhapsody in Galveston at about 1:30 PM on Sunday, June 18th. We had chosen a large ocean view stateroom on the second deck near the bow on the port side of the ship. Our window looked right out onto the water and when underway we could sometimes see the white foam on the waves created by the movement of this huge vessel through the water. Read the rest of this entry »

Words can’t describe my horror upon seeing this video.

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Youve come a long way baby…. Now turn around and go back.

Here are some Misc drawings and pictures of the kids.

Wired ran an article on identity theft recently, and it includes some excellent information.  Here are the highlights.

There’s an economic incentive to grant credit sloppily, which is why dogs and toddlers can get credit cards,” Hoofnagle said. “If the business community wanted to end identity theft, they could.

Here’s what we are doing: 

• Opt out of pre-screened credit card offerings that come in the mail by calling 888-5OPTOUT (888-567-8688). This prevents would-be identity thieves from stealing your mail and then getting credit in your name.  Shred credit applications before putting them in the trash.
• Check your credit reports frequently. Federal law allows you to get a free credit report from each of the three credit bureaus once a year. Mark your calendar every four months and check one bureau each go-round to make sure there are no accounts in your name that you haven’t opened.

I went down to CVS a little while ago to feed my Friday addiction for RockStar energy drink. Immediately to my right as I walk in is a man lying on the floor. I notice that everyone is moving away, and I my first reaction is that I just walked into a robbery or something. Then I notice that he is shaking and coughing and I realize that he is having a seizure.

A high-school age girl is kneeling down by him, but she looks totally freaked out and is looking at everyone else. He’s on his back, and starting to choke, and time is still passing. Everyone that hasn’t moved away is either ignoring him or just watching him, and nobody’s doing anything. So I grab him and roll him over.

The girl says “Don’t touch him!” and I kind of reel, because it’s been a long time since I got my first aid merit badge in the Boy Scouts. But I know that it is easy to choke if you are on your back, which is exactly what he is doing. When I roll him over he starts breathing better, but he’s really shaking a lot. She says “Are you supposed to roll him over?” I don’t answer her, because she’s still freaking out anyway. Then his hands start flying around and the girl starts calling him “Dad”.

I ask her some questions and find out that he’s had seizures since Vietnam, but she has never witnessed one and doesn’t know what to do. I look up, and realize that the employees are still standing behind the counter like stunned cattle, tongues hanging out and everything. Someone tells a cashier to call 911, but instead she calls the pharmacist to the front.

A lot of help he is: he just stands there and says “Don’t let him swallow his tongue” like 3 times, which even I know is a myth. So another cashier finally calls 911 to send an ambulance. The pharmacist won’t even TOUCH the guy, and is totally unhelpful. When the guy starts to reach for his foot, he actually moves away.

He starts to come down from his fit, but is very disoriented so his daughter and I spend the next 10 minutes trying to keep him from sitting up, which fails, and then from standing up, which also fails. It’s a losing battle, since I’m not going to be rough with the guy, but luckily as soon as he stands up the paramedics show up.

They guide him to a bench in the store, and start helping him out. The guy actually starts talking by then, although he is still a little groggy. The girl thanks me and I ask her if she needs anything. She says they are fine, and gets a call from her mom, so I buy my RockStar and pound pavement. My 2 minute trip to CVS turned into 30.

So what’s my point? Only that it sucks that there were 20 people standing around, and nobody was helping this guy. The employees, and especially the pharmacist, should have some type of process to follow in case of emergencies. I mean, it’s a PHARMACY, there are usually sick people there.

I just realized that in during the whole situation I never heard his or her name. I guess I would have failed my merit badge, since that’s the first thing you are supposed to ask.

Recently I saw an article on a group called no-www that advocate changing the way people talk about and type internet addresses. They make perfect sense. Don’t use, type, or tell anyone to go to “www.” anything anymore.

History: In the beginning (of the Internet) browsers used the “www.” subdomain to tell the resource you were connecting to that you were going to be using port 80 and the http protocol. All browser (for some time now) have been using port 80 and http as default. There is no need to explicitly state this, because they are going to do it anyway.

no-www’s goal is to get all of the traffic to http://www.yourdomain.com redirected to http://yourdomain.com. That way, no one is losing service or not getting to where they want to go, but they are being reminded that “www.” is no longer needed. If you noticed when you came to this website, if you typed www.thesmithsplace.com, you have been redirected to thesmithsplace.com.

So try it out and see if it makes your life a little easier. Next time, don’t type that www.!

UPDATE: Well, the .htaccess rewrites hosed my gallery installation, so I quit rerouting people who came from http://www. to just http://.  Oh well, it was a noble idea anyway. 

We were playing in the back yard on Sunday, and here are some pictures I took of the kids.

This image of the Andromedy Galaxy is actually 3,000 seperate infrared images stitched together. The Andromeda Galaxy contains 1 trillion stars. Astronomy is so humbling. Astrology even moreso….

Well, I said that as part of my 43things I was going to blog more about the kids, but then I’ve been writing about other things instead. Here is my first update on Emily.

• Emily weighs 39 lbs. and is 41″ tall
• She can sound out words now, so we have to be careful when we are spelling words we dont want her to know about.
• Emily’s favorites books are:
• Snuggle Puppy
• Any Dr. Seuss
• Emily is a great big sister! She loves to play with Matthew and they have a great time together. She wants to be his mommy and tries to scold him, so we have to remind her that she is not his mommy, and to leave the discipline up to us. They are so close in age, let’s hope their great relationship lasts, because Stella tells stories about her and Eddie that make my hair stand on end!
• She loves to ride her new 16″ Barbie Bike at the park.
• Emily is a VERY picky eater. We make her try everything on her plate, but she likes about 10% of what we make her try. At least she tries it. We’ve gotten to where we finish our dinner and make her sit at the table by herself until she has eaten. If not, then I get irritated having to remind her a million times to eat, and then everyone is unhappy.
• Emily loves to watch
• The Backyardigans
• Toy Story
• Tom and Jerry
• Little Einsteins
• Emily’s nicknames are: Spooky, Emmy (Matthew calls her that sometimes), and Goofball Jones

Well, I said that as part of my 43things I was going to blog more about the kids, but then I’ve been writing about other things instead. Here is my first update on Matthew.

• Matthew Weighs 29 lbs. and is 32.5″ tall
• He is talking more and more every day.
• The other morning when we came downstairs, he points and lets out this string of gibberish that ends with “light” so I ask him “Do you want me to turn on the light?” and he says “No light” so I ask him “Do you want the TV on?” and he says “No TV” so I ask him “Do you want papa? (food)” and he says “mm hmm” (which means yes).
• Matthew’s favorite books are:
• The Big Book of Pictures and Words
• Winnie the Pooh’s Busy Bees Busy Box
• Matthew eats everything in sight!
• He consistantly eats more than Emily, at every meal.
• We went to Sweet Tomatoes, and he would not stop eating! We were both done, and I had gotten him a big plate of fruit so he could have a choice, and he proceeds to methodically devour it all. At one point he turned around to look at someone, and I took his plate. That didn’t work too well. So he finished the entire plate, and looks up at us and says “Bah!” meaning “Finished!”
• Matthew loves to watch whatever show Emily is watching, which is great! (But won’t last forever, I know!) He also loves
• Go Baby! which is kind of creepy to adults, but apparently makes perfect sense to toddlers.
• The Doodlebops (He calls them “Bops”)
• Matthew’s nicknames are: Matty (We only call him Matthew when he’s in trouble), Fatty Matty, and “The boy”

Stella, John, Angelique, and I went to the Sammy Hagar concert this past Saturday (June 10, 2006). It was a great show with the first half featuring Sammy with the Wabos (his band) playing Sammy Hagar songs, and the second half with Michael Anthony playing Van Halen songs. With the exception of Sammy and Michael singing into the same mic most of the night (it looked like they were making out) it was an awesome show. It was in the Woodlands which is a nice venue, but a little far to drive. Click here for some more pictures. Click here for the setlist…

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Just in time for the 4th of July, this is better than fireworks! Click the thumbnail to see this awesome video!

Emily and I tie-dyed some of her sleep shirts the other day because she doesn’t like plain white. They came out really well, click on the thumbnails below to see some of the pictures.

Sorry to say this, but on many things ::wikipedia(”George_W._Bush”,”The W”):: has got it all wrong. Recently, there has been talk of ::wikipedia(”General Motors”,”GM”):: and ::wikipedia(”Ford Motor Company”,”Ford”):: needing a bailout a la ::wikipedia(”Chrysler”,”Chrysler”):: in 1979. President Bush said that he would not consider a bailout, because they need to produce “a product that’s relevant” to compete. Let’s look at that for a minute.

Now, I’m no huge “Buy American” proponent, in fact I drove a German car to work today, and I’m typing this while wearing a shirt that was made in India and pants that were made in El Salvador.

The main problem today is that while Americans make good products, foreign countries make good products for about 1/10th the price. Why? Because they pay their workers pennies on the dollar compared to American workers, and offer no benefits.

In the past, the conservative republican thought process was to use tariffs to combat the issue. A ::wikipedia(”Effective_rate_of_protection”,”protective tariff”):: causes foreign products to cost more, which in turn gives an advantage to domestic products.

George Bush and our Congress, under the buzz-word of “free trade”, is effectively starving the US workforce. As with most things (communism?), free trade would work in a perfect world. But free trade will never work when countries like China sell goods for less than they cost to make in order to destroy our manufacturers.

Think about the television market of the 70s-80s. There were many excellent TVs being made by ::wikipedia(”Philco”,”Philco”)::, ::wikipedia(”RCA”,”RCA”)::, ::wikipedia(”Zenith”,”Zenith”)::, ::wikipedia(”GE”,”GE”)::, and ::wikipedia(”Magnavox”,”Magnavox”)::. Japanese and Chinese electronics manufacturers waged a price war on the USA, importing TVs at below their cost to drive these companies out of business. How many of those companies still make TVs today? Not many. How many Sony, Panasonic, and JVC products do we all own?

This is what is happening with the car industry today. We need to drop the “free trade” buzz and become more protectionist! There is another reason to consider bailouts (if they are needed) of the big 2 American owned car manufacturers: Homeland Security. What would happen if we engage in another world war, but we have noone to produce tanks, personnel carriers, plane parts, etc?

The politicians pushing for “free trade” say that tariffs just lead to backlash from foreign countries that outweigh the benefits. WE CAN SURVIVE any backlash they can throw at us. If we commit to the task, there are many pressures we can use. Foreign Aid, the UN, and American technologies just to name a few. But the bottom line is, we would have to commit fully to it. This is a problem, since our politicians of today don’t have the ability to see farther than their next term.

I include both Republicans and Democrats in this. If you want to change our nation, throw the boys club out. In the upcoming elections, find and back conservative candidates, whether they have an R or D behind their name. But especially try to find Independent candidates.

Be sure to check out my friend Jason’s blog: Fighting in Texas.

In 2000 Jason was diagnosed with skin cancer on his back. After treatment and surgery, he was pronounced cancer free. Since then, he has married a wonderful girl named Jennifer, and they had an extremely cute son named Jacob. Jason was in the middle of getting his MBA from Rice when terrible news came in.

Last month, he found out that his cancer came back, and with a vengeance. His cancer is on the peritoneum (the sack which holds your organs in). Unfortunately, it is inoperable. He is currently at MD Anderson Cancer Center on his second round of bio-chemotherapy.

I believe that a person’s response to adversity is a true indicator of his character. Jason’s response and attitude to this potentially devastating situation has proven to me that his character is of the highest caliber. I wish him all the best, and admire his strength. It makes you wonder what your response would be in a similar situation.

Please pray that God guides his doctor’s hands, and gives him strength and peace during the seemingly endless procedures in store. It seems that so many people we know recently have some type of cancer. While you’re praying, let’s find a cure for this. Already treatments have become so much better, and outlooks that 10 years ago were bleak, now look promising. As Jason put it, “I plan on getting through this and ending up in full remission. There is no other alternative I will accept.” That says it all.

Jason’s Blog: http://fightingintexas.blogspot.com

Click on the pictures for more.

UFC 60 was last weekend, and while we watched most of it live, we Tivo‘d the rest. Since then I have watched it twice. It was a great showing of a great sport. If you don’t know, UFC stands for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. This is a sports league (Not unlike the WBA for boxing) that focuses on an MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) style of fighting. Read on if you are interested…
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So, as part of my 43 Things, I said I wanted to post more on the web. I think it would be a great journaling tool for when the kids get older. Hopefully you will see a daily post up here, and pictures posted more often also. Yesterday was the first of such posts. It’s kind of a cop-out, because I didnt actually write it. Oh well, gotta start somewhere….

Here’s some cool trivia:

• A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
• A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
• A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.

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