My first real voyage...

I was able to spend some time on the water this weekend. My new (to me) kayak carried me thru the brown waters of the north eastern side of Lake Moultrie, to a place called The Jungle.

And so it is....

The first time out in the water in my new kayak...

(if I had the right equipment, I would have taken pics on the water, too...but this is all you get for now) :-)

The Journey Begins!

Multimedia message
Originally uploaded by SirSnaps

With the purchase of this Wilderness Systems 145 kayak, I begin my journey of circumnavigating the globe!!


OK, not really...but I can forsee a LOT of time being spent on the water. If you remember (or looked back far enough), I had blogged once about living on a boat full time...well...THIS AIN'T THE ONE!!

LOL

That dream is still in my mind, just pushed quite a bit further towards the back.

Anywho...I'm sure I'll be getting a lot of use out of this bad boy!!

Open letter to you liberal socialists:

Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al: We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way. Here is a model separation agreement: Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes. We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them). We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood . You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security. We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U..N.. but we will no longer be paying the bill. We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find. You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right. We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem.. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World. We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag. Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you ANWAR which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.. Sincerely, John J. Wall Law Student and an American P.S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand & Jane Fonda with you.

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Want a little update?

After living in North Carolina for 14 years, and working for the same fire sprinkler company for almost 11 of those years, I decided it's time to move back to the Charleston area. Why? Mostly because I felt like it was time for me to make myself available for a family member. What, you don't know that story? Well, maybe it's not something I need to share right now. Or maybe it’s just not something I want every one to know. Either way, nothing personal, I’m just not getting into that story right now.
Anyway, I was able to find a promising job at another fire sprinkler company. It was a very large company and had a lot of design work…at the time. I was learning some things I hadn’t been taught in the past 10+ years of sprinkler design. I was getting along with co-workers. I learned a newer version of a design program I had used for years. I even learned a hydraulics program and a seismic program that I hadn’t used before. This new company was able to set up a special testing day with the N.I.C.E.T. organization. I had to drive to Orlando, but I didn’t care. I had worked for that other company over 10 years and every time I asked when or even IF I could take the NICET test, I was given the brush off. (For the record, of the 34 elements in which I could initially test, I passed 20, so I am happy with that.)
Then, as if a storm blew in, the other two designers I worked with were laid off within a week of each other. Of course, I was immediately concerned with my own job. Luckily, the design manager let me know that the workload just hadn’t kept up with the pace at which this office was moving. I was then given a new project which had a 3 week submittal date. My supervisor told me that once I complete that project, there was no new work on the books, unless something came in during that 3 week period. Well, at least I didn’t come in to work on a Tuesday only to be dismissed by 8:30 a.m. I worked hard and did what I think was a good job on that project. I did, however, keep my eyes open for another job opening. I put my resume on Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com and several other job related sites. Soon, I had a call from a recruiting company in Texas.
After a couple of non-productive interviews, I was offered a position with a smaller company. Instead of offices from Orlando to Baltimore to Houston, this company has one office in Charleston and another in Bluffton. I was offered a compensation package that was better than any other sprinkler design job I had held in the past. My duties would, however, include more project management than this last job. Thankfully, I had done a good bit of that with my previous job in NC. I thought and prayed about this new job, mostly because it would take me to Bluffton for 3 or more days each week. I don’t necessarily want to be too far from here, but Bluffton is only a 2 hour drive.
After much prayer, thought and conversation with my girlfriend (yet another story I won’t get into right now for the sake of time), I decided to take this new job. Right away, I am doing more materials listing and fabrication listing than I had previously done, BUT, I had done it in the past so that made the transition much easier. In between listing jobs, I was able to knock out a design for a small metal building. Quite honestly, I could have done that one while sleeping. It’s a rectangular box. So I’ve continued with the listing and even developed an Excel sheet for the different components needed to install the job. It’s a work in progress, but I like it.

What a beautiful sunset in Hilton Head!!!

The Stethoscope

Gore blasted over Global Warming HOAX

(from foxnews)


The founder of the Weather Channel is ridiculing Al Gore over his calls for action on global climate change, saying in a column that global warming is a "hoax" and "bad science."
John Coleman, now a weatherman at San Diego's KUSI, wrote on his station's Web site Wednesday that Gore refuses to acknowledge the faulty research on which the idea of global warming is based.
Coleman's lengthy scolding came as the former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and urged lawmakers to pass a bill that would put caps on heat-trapping gases and take the lead on a global climate treaty.
Coleman wrote that the Environmental Protection Agency is "on the verge" of naming CO2 (carbon dioxide) as a pollutant, and that seemingly all of Washington is on board with such CO2 silliness."
"I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it," Coleman wrote, describing the decades-old theory that increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere leads to global warming.
"Global Warming. It is the hoax. It is bad science. It is a high jacking of public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history," Coleman wrote.

The jobless rate increases...

When I took this job last September, things were looking good for the company. The work load was heavy, and the future for this office looked bright. I was the second, and most experienced, of 3 designers hired. Within the past week, the other two have been dismissed.

Yesterday, the district manager had a meeting with the company president to discusss (among other things, I am certain) the options for this office...one of which is closing the doors and letting the other branches (Charlotte and/or Atlanta) take up the slack. Today, we should get some sort news. We don't know if any or all of us have a job tomorrow. I'm not whining, I know God has His hand in everything.

I just hope and pray that I am able to accept the news, if it's bad for me, in a positive or at least less than sad way....and if it's good for me...I will humbly thank Him.

Depth of Field comparison

"What's the difference between f2.8 and f22?" For those of you who constantly ask me, even after I explain it...try this link. Maybe then it will make sense.

Not being a snob about it, I'm just sayin!

:-)

Full Moon

These were before I cleaned my camera's sensor.

Merry Christmas from the neighbors....

Since I don't get the day after Christmas off, I was the first to arrive at the office this morning.

I was greeted with a "Christmas gift" from someone in the neighborhood.















It doesn't appear that anything is missing from the office...so maybe it was just some random act of stupidity. Eh, who knows. After the local men in blue left, it only took 45 minutes to clean up.

Now the fun will be locating a glass company that will come out today and fix it!

Shopping at WalMart

Yesterday I was buying 2 large bags of Purina dog chow at Walmart, for my dogs: Winston, Chief, Gus, and Maximus. I was about to check out when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog. (What did she think, that I had an elephant?)

Since I had little else to do, on impulse, I told her that no, I didn't have a dog, and that I was starting the Purina Diet again, although I probably shouldn't because I ended up in the hospital last time. On the bright side though, I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of every hole in my body and IVs in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry, that the food is nutritionally complete; so I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was enthralled with my story by now.)

Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food had poisoned me. I told her no; I had stopped in the middle of the parking lot to lick my butt and a car hit me.

I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack; he was laughing so hard! WAL-MART won't let me shop there anymore.

REMEMBER THIS AT CHRISTMAS TIME:

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December. Female reindeer retain their antlers until after they give birth in the spring.





Therefore,according to EVERY historical rendition depicting Santa's reindeer, EVERY single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen, had to be a girl.





We should've known...ONLY women would be able to drag a fat man in a red velvet suit all around the world in one night and not get lost.

Earthquake today near my home

The Post and Courier
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Shaking walls, rattling shelves and a boom sound startled many residents of Goose Creek, Summerville and Ladson as they began their day.
The U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Center recorded a quake with preliminary magnitude of 3.6 at 7:42 a.m. Soon, more than 200 reports about the quake began flowing into the Survey's National Earthquake Center.
"It has been felt in the general area," geophysicist Jessica Sigala said. "We probably won't see damage with this."
Carrie Ann Bedwell, another geophysicist at the Earthquake Center, said the quake was located about 10 miles east southeast of Summerville.
Michelle Kaneff has been helping her 12-year-old son get ready for school in their home in Goose Creek's Devon Forest subdivision when she heard a loud rumbling.
"He pointed to the wall and you could see the whole house shifting to the left-hand side and it came right back," she said. "Within a couple seconds it had stopped."
Parts of Berkeley and Dorchester counties periodically experience minor seismic activity.
The most devastating earthquake in Charleston struck in 1886, killing more than 100 people and injuring some 500.
The 7.3 magnitude temblor came from the Woodstock fault just before 10 p.m. on an August night. Two-thirds of the brick buildings in Charleston were destroyed or nearly destroyed; all the buildings in Summerville, within a few miles of the epicenter, were at least damaged.
The fault is actually two rifts in the rock deep underground, one traveling roughly from the ACE Basin almost to Lake Moultrie, the other traveling roughly along the Ashley River. They open on each other underneath the river somewhere around Middleton Place.

Another nice drop...

The 3AM wake-up...

A man is sleeping in bed with his wife when he hears a knock at the door.
He glances at the clock and wonders who is at the door at 3a.m.
He puts on his robe and answers the door, a drunk stranger stands there.
"Hello mister, I was hoping you could help me, I need a push." said the stranger.
"It's 3am and raining out side, I don't think so," replies the man as he shuts the door.

When he goes back to bed his wife asks who was at the door.
"A drunk needing a push" he tells her, "What did you tell him?" she asks.
"I told him no, it's 3am and raining" he replies.
She says "I think you should help him, remember when we were broke down
and those guys helped us when we didn't think anyone was going to stop?"

So he gets up, gets dressed, puts on his raincoat.
As he heads out the door into the night, he doesn't see anyone.
"Are you still here?" he asks, "Yes" the drunk replies.
"Do you still need a push?" the man asks.
"Yes, thank you" the drunk replies.
"Where are you?" he asks.







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"Over here on the swing."

Gotta love it...at least for now!