I have been working on getting my logo finished for the last month. Initially, I used a logo company recommended to me by the marketing/PR firm that I was working with and that turned out to be disastrous. It has taken well over a month to get a pile of crap from them. Fortunately, I found a firm that specializes in taking logo concepts and fixing them. And fix it they did - the new logo is great.

I am also in the market for banner design for advertising on various websites/blogs. If anyone can recommend a good designer for banners I would greatly appreciate it.

Also, in case anyone noticed. I added Sphere content for the website. Essentially, it is a way for you (and me too) to read other blogs or websites about topics that are similar to something I have posted about - check it out.

In other news, I have been randomly ill today for some unknown reason.

I also found out my parents are coming to visit in November. Yay. We will also be staying in Honolulu for a couple of days at a nice resort so I can shop and do some other fun things.

Popularity: 21% [?]

This is such a joke.  Senator Larry Craig is such a ridiculous figure.  He is one of a number of conservatives (religious and otherwise) in the last few years to turn out to be gay.  Way to show the self-hate!  It is truly sad that these geezers are so far in the closet that they cannot admit that they are gay and actually be happy for once in their lives.  Are all Republicans gay?  Or just the gay hating ones?

In other news, I was actually able to watch the YouTube/CNN Democratic debates that took place about a month ago.  I really enjoyed it and thought that it was a unique and interesting format.  The Republicans will be having their debate sometime in November, I think.   I really thought that the standouts were Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Richardson.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Does anyone else not think with words?

Does anyone else not ever see faces in dreams and lack the ability to recall the face of someone you just saw a minute ago?  But, can you recognize them later?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Between the Hawaii Superferry and the military Hawaii has its hands full.

The Superferry is this ridiculous boat that will take you and your car to a neighbor island. It is not your typical open-air ferry but instead is some kind of luxury boat complete with a restaurant, tvs, and a bar. Having priced a Maui to Honolulu journey it appears that it will cost about $270 for an adult for the roundtrip including your car. One of the most irresponsible aspects of this is that they have a bar where you can drink and then get in your car and drive drunk off of the boat. The boat ride between Maui and Honolulu would take about three hours. The average interisland flight costs about $39 one way (and often only $19 because of special fares). To fly from Maui to Honolulu you are in the air for less than 20 minutes. I heard that on the inaugural journey that people got seasick. Given that people got seasick during the summer I can only imagine what would happen in December when the swells are huge and often times over 20 feet. If the price, sea sickness, and long voyage were not bad enough it only makes it worse that they will be wasting a ton of fuel, dumping sewage in the ocean, disturbing marine life, and overall creating an ecological problem in Hawaii. I hope the Superferry fails.

The military located off Saddle Road on the Big Island has been found to have Depleted Uranium which they have long denied having - this same thing has occurred on Oahu as well. Many of the feral cats on Mauna Kea have a type of feline leukemia - gee, I wonder why? Fortunately, this is all coming out at the same time that the military wants to increase training exercises around all islands (read: dump more toxic materials into the ocean, frighten people and wildlife, kill endangered species, pollute the air). Fortunately, they are having a public hearing on this issue on Wednesday. I think I will go to hear what people are saying.

*Update*

I was reading on surfingthetao.com this bit about the SuperFerry - makes for interesting reading, I think:

“Most interesting is – no surprise here – the military finds them quite useful. In fact this article points out that there are far more fuel efficient and less environmentally dangerous vessels in existence, but they weren’t chosen for Hawaii. Why? They can’t carry Stryker Brigades, hummers, helicopters, and other equipment (which could even become contaminated with depleted uranium). The article goes on to point out that the Chair of the Superferry board is John Lehman, a former Navy Undersecretary during the Reagan years and member of the 9/11 Commission, and claim, “The Superferry was foisted on Hawai‘i to meet a new mission for the US military. That mission: To have civilian looking high-speed military transport, manned by subcontractors, available at short notice to deliver assault troops and equipment, anywhere in the Pacific.”

Surprise, surprise.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Being a vegetarian, it only stands to reason that I would be attracted to the idea of vegetarian shoes. I was just looking at Zappos and I took a look at the vegetarian shoes they carry. I really like the idea of buying nice shoes that are earth friendly, recyclable, cruelty free, and all of that good stuff but every vegetarian shoe I have seen looks like it jumped out of the 1960s or the 1980s. Who decided that vegetarians should lack fashion sense? I would not buy a single shoe I saw on that page. The more casual shoes look more like something the hippies with dreadlocks that live in Pahoa would wear - nothing wrong with that - but it is just not me. This shoe, called the Earth Flight is just about the ugliest shoe I’ve ever seen and it comes in such an array of colors - black, poo brown, lighter shade of poo brown, and dirty ocean color. These people should give Manolo Blahnik a call so he can straighten them out about how to make shoes. Make less ugly shoes, please!

*Update* After being out and about today I would just like to say that Crocs are *not* an acceptable vegetarian solution to footwear.  Those things are so hideously ugly that they should have gone out long long ago.  They are made out of something called  croslite  but they feel really mushy and soft in a rather gross way, I think.  Those things should be kept for the garden only.

Brian is out of town for the day - he’s in Honolulu living it up in Waikiki. Fortunately, he will be taking a cab where he needs to go so I don’t have to worry about him driving there (since he does not know where things are). I am sure he will not have the grand time I had last weekend in Honolulu with the cute convertible, fun convention, and my culinary adventure.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Apparently, life might have been found on Mars recently from the 1976 Viking Probe but at the time we overlooked the hydrogen based life form comparable to bacteria found in Antarctica.  This is extremely fascinating and I am looking forward to seeing what scientists find out from studying the data further.

A number of news outlets are reporting this but the most notable one is FOXNews who is of course screaming that it is not true by bringing in some random janitor professor that they found in a gutter roaming the halls of a university.  FOX even has a “space center” which I am sure talks much about the ever lofty goal of GWB to “visit the moon” - because that’s never been done before…

Popularity: 11% [?]

I am thinking of beginning to study Finnegans Wake again but this time I shall use the Annotations to Finnegans Wake  to provide the sort of information one might gain from reading the book with a Joyce scholar or a large group.  It should prove to be interesting.  In the interim I am continuing to read the rest of Lawrence and Joyce’s works.

More later - I am busy.

Popularity: 12% [?]

I was reading this article on CNN and it really struck a chord inside of me.  Then I read this article.

The United States supposedly invaded Iraq to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. When none were found, instead of admitting wrong doing and leaving, the United States government decided that the real reason was Saddam Hussein, terrorism, and the installation of democracy. When that failed they decided that any type government would do so long as it is stable.

I believe the regime under Hussein was much more stable than the current “democracy” in place and such a reign as he had would fall under the new ideology they are attempting to employ in Iraq. While I certainly would not call his government desirable his government was also not in mass chaos and certainly was better than the current war situation. So, this war has caused well over 100,000 American casualties, killed 76,000 civilians, caused mental instability among a large portion of soldiers, and has wasted $454 billion dollars. And for what? Absolutely nothing.

Bush also seems to be messing up his rhetoric regarding Vietnam drawing more on the experiences of Cambodians - re-education camps, killing fields, etc.  He says this was all the result of America pulling out [of Vietnam] and Iraq would be like that if America pulled out.  I fail to see his point.  The US government secretly bombed Cambodia and then left leaving millions of Cambodians to be massacred by Pol Pot and if that was not bad enough the US government actually helped Pol Pot overthrow the Vietnamese government that overthrew the Khmer Rouge.  Bush also seems to invoke Vietnam as to illustrate that something was learned.  Obviously, given that the Iraq war occurred nothing was learned from the millions of lives spent on the Vietnam war.

Our parent’s generation has sent our generation to slaughter in Iraq just as our grandparent’s generation sent our parent’s generation to slaughter in Vietnam just like our great grandparent’s generation sent our grandparent’s generation to slaughter in WW2 & Korea and so on…

When will we learn?

Popularity: 9% [?]

(20″ in Hilo) Tsunami √
Earthquake (#1) √
Fires √
Perseid meteor shower- √
Weird brown scum appears in water in Kona - √
Earthquake (#2) - √
Hurricane - √
Earthquake (#3) - √
More fire on the Kona side - √
A big chunk of land falls into the ocean - √
What’s next?

Popularity: 8% [?]

While this is not usually in line with things I comment about I simply could not resist saying something about Michael Vick.  He must be the most idiotic person in the world to potentially ruin his football career because he was not able to find a proper financial adviser.  Dog fighting?  Is that really the proper place for someone with many many millions of dollars to be putting money?  Was this not obvious to him?  Did he even have a financial adviser at all? Exactly how did he plan to report all of that illegal income?  This guy really must be the absolute most stupid person playing football today and that is saying a great deal, I think.

Here in Hawaii we have not been hit with the tsunami (which is quite good) from the Peru earthquake.  We did, however, have an earthquake at 2:20 this morning which woke us up and sent us into the doorway.  I think it was a 3.8 - something like that.   We are well.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Because of the earthquake in Peru we are under a tsunami alert which may hit at as early as 2 AM. We shall see.

At least we are prepared for a disaster because of the hurricane. The hurricane ended up being a non-event. The crazy part was that the radar showed that we were being hit really hard but in actuality we had very little rain. It has been completely overcast because of the hurricane and we haven’t seen the sun but other than that the wind was not bad nor was the rain. It was odd. I did see on Konaweb that a person (Peter A) who lives at South Point posted a photograph of the hurricane from the coast - it is really amazing. Here it is:

The only other exciting thing going on is that our housekeeper quit but she has a replacement for us so that is fortunate since we do not clean. The REAL secret to a happy marriage without strife is hiring someone to keep your house clean.

Popularity: 11% [?]

We have been making hurricane preparations today for Flossie (which I accidentally called Floosie) - filling up the ofuro (Japanese soaking tub) with water, filling up a 5 gallon container with water, taping up our picture window in the living room, moving plants, taking the recyclables to the recycling center (made a whopping $8), took out the trash, unplugged everything (except this laptop), and went in search of batteries (I got the last pack of C batteries at Ace, yay!), etc.   I also made about 20 cups of rice and we have a ton of MRE TastyBite Indian food so we are set for weeks if necessary.  Of course, our neighbor next door has made no preparations and they have a bunch of stuff sitting out in their yard which I hope will not come flying through our windows. They have cancelled school for tomorrow  on the whole island.  The storm surge is predicted to be about 20 feet in Hilo - it could cause massive flooding.  We are hoping for the best.

Also, we had a rather big earthquake here just a couple of hours ago - a 5.4-5.7 just south of Hilo so it was quite close.  It was from Kilauea - maybe a new vent opened - we shall find out soon I am sure.  We have some broken glasses and knicknacks and a few pictures fell off the wall.  A bunch of stuff fell out of the cabinets as well but we are fine.  Also, when we went downstairs I noticed a bunch of water on the floor of the basement and apparently the ofuro leaked during the earthquake.  So, Brian sort of cleaned it up and I moved all of our shoes so hopefully we won’t have to deal with that issue anymore tonight.

The county is pretty much saying that the power (and Hawaii has no backup power) is going to go out which in turn means that the stores will be closed, no gas will be available, no water can be obtained through the faucet - but we shall see.

At least we have one working phone that does not require electricity.

More later…

Popularity: 13% [?]

Well, it is final - I am going to Honolulu to go to the “Made in Hawaii” trade show.  Brian said he wanted me to go and I want to go so I am going to fly over for the day and make as many business contacts as I possibly can in just under 12 hours.  It should be fun and very profitable.  … I sound like a Ferengi.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Brian’s parents just visited and we had a grand time.  We went snorkeling in Hilo several times and had a great time seeing the variety of fish out and about.  I saw my first snake eel and later snake eel babies.  On Brian’s birthday he and his father went hiking in North Kohala and had a lot of fun exploring Polulu Valley and the neighboring valley.  We also went to the Lava Tree State Park down near Pahoa.  We also visited the astronomy center at UHH (Imiloa) and did star gazing on Mauna Kea.  The evening on Mauna Kea was less than enjoyable for me though - I was car sick on the hour long ride to Mauna Kea which was further exacerbated by taking a 1 mile walk at 9000 feet mostly uphill on the way back at sunset when it was about 50 degrees.  I felt horrible the whole night but fortunately I woke up feeling better the next day.  We also visited the Kaumana Caves but I did not walk very far as my shoes proved to be inadequate for the task.  I think everyone had a good time…

Brian and I also went to an rough water  race while his parents were visiting.  We checked it out and I am currently thinking about doing the 2 mile Kealakekua Bay rough water race.  I surely will not win but I think it would be a lot of fun.  Brian is now using this as yet another excuse to talk me into doing qualifying races for the Ironman.  I think I will pass as I am not interested in dying before I turn thirty, thank you very much.

I was also able to bodyboard at Hapuna and was able to ride one absolutely perfect wave and a bunch of not so perfect waves.  I did get a nasty burn.  While in the water I was trying to remember why I had made such a big deal about wearing my board shorts but I could not recall why - it became obvious to me later when my derrière burned.

While at Kona Bay Books, Brian spotted Da Jesus Book - the Pidgin Bible.  Seriously, I am speechless.

In other news, the Big Island is getting Target, Circuit City, PetSmart (I think), PF Changs, and Office Max all on the Kona side.  I am not exactly excited.  I like Target and would gladly trade in Walmart and Kmart for it but seriously we don’t need all of those stores.

Popularity: 24% [?]