Monthly Archives: June 2008

With the July 4th holiday this week, traffic makes it look a safe bet
its going to be busy!

Pretty cool tool this Feedjit widget! ;) here’s a list of visits by country to the Den (another thing that’s pretty cool os I posted this using ScribeFire, an extension for the Firefox web browser, which is also very cool! Kudos all around!

Geo-Traffic today on garazon.com

United States [55%]
United Kingdom [9%]
Cyprus [3%]
Australia [3%]
India [3%]
Philippines [2%]
Ireland [2%]
South Korea [2%]
Canada [2%]
Vietnam [2%]
Netherlands [1%]
Austria [1%]
Saudi Arabia [1%]
South Africa [1%]
Puerto Rico [1%]
European Union European Union [1%]
Germany [1%]
Greece [1%]
Singapore [1%]
Italy [1%]
Poland [1%]
Thailand [1%]
Spain [1%]
Slovakia [1%]
France [1%]

Technorati Tags: feedjit, scribefire, garazon, widgets

Somewhere on this website, or one of my others is the story of how I came about the screen name of Garazon. I’ll look for the link to it… Oh. it’s on my old site…  How I came by the name Garazon is a rather often asked question. It’s kind of strange and spooky really. When I first got online through AOL I had the option of creating various other screen names to use for individual family members. I was trying to come up with something unique, (which turns out to be a very hard thing to accomplish). I went through everything I could think of, entering a new screen name only to have this blasted dialog box pop up saying “that name is unavailable or already in use” or some such nonsense.. (more…)

Day 6 found us on the way to Paphos for a mini 3 day holiday given to us by Alison’s parents, Jack and Maureen, as an engagement present. It was so nice of them to do this and it is a memory we will have all our lives. We set out Monday morning and did a little sightseeing along the way as we had to wait to check in to the hotel anyway. I have always loved antiquities and ruins, so I couldn’t pass up a chance to visit the Sanctuary of Apollo located very near to Curium (Kourion) (more…)

From my Cyprus trip in October 2007, Oct, 14, 2007 recap finally done , 6 months later! ;)

Sunday Morning, the 5th day of our holiday we had been invited to go to a tavern in one of the mountain villages that Alison and her friends frequent, Taki’s tavern, for lunch. With no rush to get ready in the morning, we had a coffee or two and a bit of breakfast out in the garden.

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This is the first of likely many more posts to come on this topic. No matter how much we try to appreciate the things we have everyday, there seems to come a time we find ourselves all of a sudden realising how much we depend on them and how much we do take them for granted until they are gone. From the mundane things to those most important to us, we should always strive to appreciate the things we have been blessed with rather than to moan and groan by those we seem to think we are missing or needing.

What brings me to write this particular post was something that happened yesterday when I go home from work and went to sit down to the pc to spend some time with Alison before she went to bed (I hate the 7 hours time difference, but not nearly as much as the distance!).  Anyway I sat down to the pc to open Google talk so we could chat… then nothing.. no connection at all. Well it happens occasionally the modem resets or they do something and I just have to power down the modem and restart it and I’m back in business, well that had no effect at all. I won’t go into all the things I tried to get back online as that’s another sort of post, suffice it to say I did everything i could think of to fix it, only to find out in the end there was an outage in my area affecting a lot of us and it would be the late hours of the night before it was back on. :(  Well we have been blessed by not having any really bad problems staying in touch with one another as we always have the mobile texts to fall back on if one of us loses a connection. well what do you think the odds would be that the same time I loose my Internet, Alison’s cell stops working! I had sent several texts since walking in the door and had no replies which I knew was odd as that time of day we are right there to speak to another. well just thinking she was busy with something I didn’t really get worried, just anxious of missing our chat and not being able to tell her. well anyway a little more time passes with both of us sort of getting into a panic that was beginning to grow. I tried calling her and only got a message saying that number isn’t available. Real panic then thinking the worst! It was a few more minutes passed that I even thought to ring her landline! :o) How everything these days has sort of gone to where we communicate though mobile phones, pcs or some other technological marvel ( not just us, i mean the world in general) I didnt even remember that she  had a home phone! well once I did I rang her right away and she was at the time doing the same thing, rummaging around her drawer looking for my home number!  Well finally we managed to speak about 2 hours later from what we hoped to but at least it was relief to speak and we got to say goodnight :)

I guess from this story alone I could pull out 4 or 5 different things we  take for granted on all levels of life all the time but for this post I will just stick to the communication aspects, the “”instant communication” which is the Internet and wireless technologies. In ou case being 5000 miles apart, we depend on this always working. I will stop for just a minute and add one of the most important things in life, to never take your love for granted either. meaning in this case if you are blessed to have to have your spouse or love near and close, always be thankful you can speak, and if you are one thinking now you are fine not talking to your spouse, maybe you have already taken too much for granted… think about it… Anyway not to preach right now, just saying that we have become so dependent on all these techno things that they often become a part of us, a way of life even. Thats’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is true, I was really at a loss for a while yesterday not being able to reach my beautiful bride and I couldn’t even think logically. not that i do think logically a lot of other times either, but that aside it made me realise just how “wired in” I am in this world.

I depend on our emails and emails to my friends and family, instant messages, cell calls, all of that, even the news I read online having years ago canceled my newspapers. Its all convenience isnt it. So easy to come sit here and click a button or two and speak across the ocean or send a photo or video tot he web, just to keep in touch with friends and family. Instantly.. So that is the first thing I think many of us do take for granted in this, just one of many. and its not just having the Internet, its having the fast one! I have had a broadband connection now for many years, only very rarely having service disrupted. those few times it was in the early years it wasn’t so important as it is now with my Bonny Brit on the other side of the pond. I need it! I need her! :) Well I found myself last night really at a loss of what to do to pass the evening as so much time I do spend online, whether its for amusement or communication with family or even in my work with photos, browsing for some filter or some certain tutorial or resource to aid in my restoration work. I depend on it being there and working. I still have my AOL account which I maintain for my sister inlaw  mostly so she can get online, and in emergencies for me to get online too. like last night. :) well it has been so long since I have even signed in I never realised how slow it really is now! even the browser oon my phone is faster than dialup! It took what seemed t be the longest time to load any of the pages I normally view online. it wouldn’t even load the speed test applet at all, after two minutes I just closed the page in frustration. Well it was enough to get my mail and just thankful I didn’t have any with large attachments! I ended up just writing our normal morning mail on my iPhone and sending it to Alison from there. Our friend Mike was mentioning dial up in one of his posts or comments somewhere not long ago, I think saying he could go back to dialup if he had to, I cant remember the exact things he said right now or which post it was in… well after last night I don’t think i could ever go back to dialup on these pcs. not with the things I am interested in anyway photos and videos and streaming content, not to mention these intensive websites we have these days. It would be impossible to maintain I think now. i would go berserk waiting for a file to upload or download on dialup… like i said my phone is 5 times faster than dialup, and I would use that first.  Well things are sorted and back in order now and  everything is back to working, Alison’s cell too. I just wont take for granted anymore that each time we speak its a blessing and i am so thankful for all these things we have to keep in touch while we are apart.

Guess that’s it for this post, but just remember to look around and be thankful for those things that any of you take for granted and don’t realise it.. everything is a gift if you are willing to see it.

With all the flooding of the last few days in Iowa and other midwest states, this song has been on my mind a lot. I’m sure most of my readers are familiar with the Led Zepplin cover which is probably the best known, but searching this morning for a YT vid to post, I found out that the song was originally written in 1929!  here’s this from Wiki: “When the Levee Breaks” is a blues song written and first recorded by husband and wife Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in 1929. The song is in reaction to the upheaval caused by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.  With that information I found this recording of the original.. 

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Our thoughts and prayers go out to all affected by this terrible event.

Smoke update:  Saturday- June 14, 2008

We had probably the worst smoke from the wildfire in Hyde County than we have had since the first 2 days of it starting. You could smell the smoke inside the house this morning, and just to walk outside would leave you with burning red eyes from just a few minutes out in it. It seemed to get a bit heavier too the closer I got to work, so I used my cell to try and get a couple of pictures, and it really doesn’t do it justice but you can get the idea as normally about this time the sun has been up about an hour I guess and usually its good enough light most headlights are off, but you can see here they were needed this morning.

This next shot is just crossing into Dare County across the Wright Memorial Bridge. I fight that glaring sun very clear morning and its hell to see the traffic lights normally, even at the light. Well the smoke was  thick enough this morning to block the sun a great deal and you can see how the smoke just envelopes the whole region.

This last photo was around 5 PM this evening with me just turning down the road I live on, you can see the smoke is still heavy in the air, but decreased some. not a lot though. The smell stays with you and just hangs in the air. Thankfully the wind seems to be shifting some as I write this and its clearing off a good deal now. More pics coming if we have any more rough days like this.

Update: Pics From Saturday, June 21, 2008

On the way to work Saturday morning around 7 am (yes I am always late for work!) The smoke was heavier than I have seen it since the fire started. Thankfully its not been so bad for us here with the way the wind has been blowing but I do feel really bad for those right near it having to suffer through this for such a long time. Although the fire is well contained, about 70%, just the nature of it, being more or less one huge pile of peat, is going to have this thing smoldering for weeks. It would take many days straight of a good soaking rain to even put a dent in putting it out completely. This time of year the odds are against that happening.

I was reading the news from some of the Cyrpus online newspapers this afternoon as I often do, just to keep up with things going on where my baby lives… for now ;) Well just a while ago I went to one of them, the Famagusta Gazette, and immediately one of the headlines grabbed my eye “Hospital needs help with dead bodies”!

Well I know its a serious story as I have read it, but I get amused sometimes to see the way the headlines are written and it struck me funny, yes I have a warped sense of humour :) . At first glance of the headline, I was thinking I definitely would want to avoid that particular hospital for any kind of treatment, or even to visit someone there! LOL  Well if that one didnt make me laugh, look a little farther up! Now I don’t know about you, but I wondered right away how in the world they got inside the foreigner’s nuts to find the drugs to begin with! LOL Well the story was of a man who was hiding drugs inside hazelnut shells, but of course the title is leading one to imagine something else. or maybe its just me. I had to laugh at the last line of the story itself too… “Drug squad officers said they had never seen drugs hidden in nuts before.” Well I can honestly say I havent either! LOL   I guess with the official language in Cyprus being Greek, sometimes the editors and proofreaders dont realise the way it sounds to immature Americanos like me! Well American news site make just as many, if not more, funny sounding headlines than these.

Just about a week ago a lightening strike in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge sparked a fire that has to date burned about 42000 acres in Northeastern North Carolina. There’s a great deal of information and some very good links at this site, InciWeb, so I wont bother to rewrite all the many details. Suffice it to say its still not contained (40%) thus far and its effects reaching way beyond the area that is burning. This picture is from my front door in Grandy, NC yesterday afternoon on a day with cloudless skies. that isn’t just a summer time haze but smoke from the fire itself reaching us, and it got even thicker as night fell with the way the winds shifted. Needless to say with temperatures near 100 degrees, it was miserable to have to be outside. And several smoke warnings along with the heat advisory have been issued since this fire began. The photo of course doesn’t do justice to the acrid thick air that burns the eyes. I cant imagine what its like for the firefighters there on the scene.

We’ve had some relief today with the wind once more shifting and coming from the northwest, and this cold front that passed through last night has really cooled things off as well so its been a very nice day. Well the bad news is this fire is in an area that basically is a big pile of peat moss which will smolder and burn fro possibly months to come, It would only take a deluge of rain for several days straight to come close to getting this thing completely out. Not likely to be happening anytime soon. 

I remember last Wednesday morning and walking outside on the deck after i woke up and seeing the area around here very smoky and thinking too myself someone was burning leaves or trees stumps, that sort of thing which is sort of common in a rural area like this with fields being cleared and such, but then it occurred tome being that early no one would likely have been up long enough to have a fire causing that much smoke, so my next thought it was a house fire nearby but I hadn’t heard any sirens or anything like that. Well like i say its sort of common to see smoke in the area as it is legal to get a burn permit around here for clearing land. Well i just took it as a good reason to stay inside for the day and be lazy :)  It really wasn’t until the next morning I was waking up and getting ready for work that I checked the news and found out it was a wildfire and one expected to grow. I wish I had thought to get a picture of it then as it reminded me of driving in the mountains when the clouds are hanging low and its resembling a fog.  By that afternoon the wind had shifted some and it wasnt so noticeable. So its been like this a week now depending on the wind and what area is having to deal with this. I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of it here either. Not that I am hoping to get any more photos by any means, but if it gets bad again I sill post a few.   

Somehow with all these different natural disaster type of incidents occuring with so much frequency lately; floods, tornados, fires, earthquakes  I am always thinking of this line from the Cowardly Lion in the “Wizard of Oz” – “Unusual weather we’re having, ain’t it?”