What would you do if you had $150,000 to spend?
Monday, November 03, 2008
Turning a nightmare into a dream
By JEMIMAH NOONOO
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Dozens of Houston brides found out Sunday that fairy-tale endings aren't just for storybooks.
Television personality Rachael Ray granted wedding wishes for 33 couples who were jilted when their original ceremony venues went out of business after Hurricane Ike.
Many brides lost thousands of dollars in deposits, a misfortune that prompted Ray to foot the bill for a mass wedding at Minute Maid Park. The ceremony will be featured in an episode of her daytime show later this month.
"If there is a fairy godmother, it is Rachael Ray," said groom Victor Cabungcal, 23. "This is an absolute miracle."
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Red Raiders Announce Their Arrival
By THAYER EVANS
Texas Tech’s Michael Crabtree scoring a touchdown with a second left. Texas Tech’s upset of previously undefeated Texas took it to the center of the college football universe.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
The Stench Run: Republicans Ramp Up Negative Attacks As Election Day Nears
McCain Campaign Demands LA Times Rlease Khalidi Video: The McCain campaign sought to portray Obama as an extremist after learning that the LA Times has video of Obama attending the same party as Rashid Khalidi. HuffPost's Seth Colter Walls discovers that this guilt-by-association game will be difficult for McCain to pull off:
In regards to Khalidi, however, the guilt-by-association game burns John McCain as well.
During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars.
A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. (See grant number 5180, "West Bank: CPRS" on page 14 of this PDF.)
The relationship extends back as far as 1993, when John McCain joined IRI as chairman in January. Foreign Affairs noted in September of that year that IRI had helped fund several extensive studies in Palestine run by Khalidi's group, including over 30 public opinion polls and a study of "sociopolitical attitudes."
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
WV Isn’t The Only State Where ES&S Voting Machines Are Flipping D Votes To R
Sent to you by James via Google Reader:
Can't see video? Click here. Then there's North Carolina. And the Finns. Next Wednesday should be an exciting news day what with the wrong candidate winning and all. If you can't win fairly… This is just getting worse and worse. Now it's happening in Texas. (And in MO, if you read to the end of [...]
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Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The Onion – Obama Undertakes Presidential Internship To Ease Concerns About ...
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Saturday, October 25, 2008
N. Texas residents say machines switched Dem votes
“When I cast an early vote Wednesday at Palo Pinto County Courthouse, my vote was switched from Democrat to Republican right in front of my face — twice,” reported Lona Jones, a Precinct 1 county resident.
Intending to vote straight party on the Democratic ticket, Jones said she was surprised Wednesday when the electronic voting machine “on the left as you face the machines” in the courthouse basement asked her if she wanted to cast her vote for a straight Republican ticket.
Thinking she had pushed the wrong button the first time the machine “came up Republican,” Jones said she repeated her intended straight-party vote.
“The second time I was sure to just touch the Democratic button,” she said, further reporting that the machine responded to her selection, “’Do you want to change your Republican straight ticket vote to a Democratic vote?’ I pressed, ‘Yes,’ then it came back up and it was a total Republican ticket again.”
Friday, October 24, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Chronicle endorses Obama for president, Biden for vice president
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The Chronicle endorses Barack Obama for president and Joe Biden for vice president of the United States.
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DIY Blender Defender Keeps Cats off Counters [Weekend Project]
Sent to you by James via Google Reader:
Having trouble keeping your cat off the kitchen counter or away from your plants? You've really just got two options: You can either accept the fact that your cat's going to get up there because you can't watch her all the time, or you could build a motion-sensing security-camera booby trap that scares the crap out of your cat whenever she jumps up there. Most of us would settle with the former option, but an inventive fellow named Brian decided that option two was the way he'd rather go, and the result is the Blender Defender. When triggered, Blender Defender switches on a blender, flashes a strobe, and terrifies cats. While you may never get around to building your own Blender Defender, it is nice to see someone using previously mentioned tools like ffmpeg, X10 automation, and a dash of Perl to make something interesting. Be sure to click through to see the poor cat suffer the wrath of the Blender Defender.
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It’s Beginning Again — The Stealing Of The 2008 Vote
Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.
This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for “Barack Obama” kept flipping to “John McCain”.
Think You're Multitasking? Think Again
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Joe the Plumber Isn’t What He Seems — Including Being A Legal Plumber
GOP starting to act like the old PRI
By IAN URBINA
More than 200,000 registered Ohio voters may be blocked from casting regular ballots on Election Day because of a federal appeals court decision on Tuesday requiring the disclosure of lists of voters whose names did not match those on government databases, state election officials and voting experts said.
The court decision requires Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state, to provide the names to local election officials by Friday. Once the local officials have the names, they may require these voters to cast provisional ballots rather than regular ones, and they may ask partisan poll workers to challenge these voters on Election Day. Both possibilities could cause widespread problems when the voters show up at the polls."
Friday, October 10, 2008
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
States’ Purges of Voter Rolls Appear Illegal
Published: October 8, 2008
Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.
The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.
Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening and trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Debris from Hurricane Ike litters South Padre Island
Waves brought even a pickup to the island's beach
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Cabin intact, moved half mile by Ike surge
Sent to you by James via Google Reader:
A neighbor found something that a Beaumont woman had been missing since Hurricane Ike swamped Bolivar Peninsula.
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Searchers dread what Ike hid in Chambers County marsh | Chronicle | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
Chambers marsh contains hazards and maybe victims
By CINDY HORSWELL
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 30, 2008, 10:57PM
SHARÓN STEINMANN CHRONICLE
Texas Parks and Wildlife game warden Hector Gonzalez uses his 350-horsepower airboat Tuesday to skim across two inches of water, avoiding alligators and snakes in this debris field in Chambers County."
Monday, September 29, 2008
Oak Island: stories from a wasteland
Published September 29, 2008
OAK ISLAND – Diane Vice was back home, standing outside the church she grew up in.
Not that anything else about Oak Island looked like the town she remembered. Hurricane Ike took care of that a couple of weeks ago.
But one thing Vice knows all too well is the damage a hurricane can bring. The owner of Vice Construction in Moss Point, Miss., has spent the past three years rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina.
“I was raised here from kindergarten through sixth grade,” she said as she looked down Oak Island’s Oyster Street. “My father was a shrimper and we lived in a little house down the road. It burned and we moved to Mississippi.
“But you never forget where you came from.”
Vice returned to Oak Island over the weekend with six of her employees and an 18-wheeler crammed full of food, baby diapers and formula, second-hand clothes, chain saws and generators all donated by businesses in Jackson County, Miss.
The much-needed supplies were for the 500 or so Oak Island residents, all of whom lost everything the night of Sept. 12-13.
“We went through Katrina and it (Moss Point) looked worse than this. We have lots of employees who lost homes in that,” Vice said. “We’re survivors of a hurricane, so we know what it’s like.
Ike Photos
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Sunday, September 28, 2008
We got power!
I had a nephew who lost his house - his family is all okay - so, all things considered, we are doing well. We are all okay, and we have a more or less intact house. Our house came out okay for the most part. The roof was pretty much stripped bare - thankfully it hasn't rained since the day after the storm - and the air conditioner is working, though it sounds like an old DC3. The downstairs carpet is a mess, with some water damage from the rain, and leaves everywhere from being tracked in. Still a lot of clean up to do.
Thankfully, the weather has cooperated, and it didn't get as hot as it does after most storms. Hot, but not awful, not for the Gulf Coast, anyway. It'll be nice going out to the patio because you want to and have too.
Hurricanes are truly awful, but I guess that's the price you have to pay for living next to the water - and we have to live by the water, too far inland is just wrong :)
So, again, all things considered, we came out okay.
Two weeks after Ike, more than 400 are still missing
By LISE OLSEN
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 28, 2008, 1:40AM
Gail Ettenger made her last phone call at 10:10 p.m. She was trapped in her Bolivar Peninsula bungalow with her Great Dane, Reba. A drowning cat cried outside. Her Jeep bobbed in the seawater surging around her home.
Ettenger, 58, told her friend she was reading old love letters by flashlight. "I think I really screwed up this time," she said, according to Monroe Burks, Ettenger's neighbor who had evacuated to Houston.
That was Friday, Sept 12. On Wednesday — 12 days later — her nearly nude body was found face down by a huge debris pile in a remote mosquito-ridden marsh in Chambers County, about 10 miles inland from where her gray beach house once stood.
Two weeks after Hurricane Ike swept through the Texas coast, 400 people remain missing, mostly from Galveston County, according to an analysis of calls logged to a hot line set up by the nonprofit Laura Recovery Center to assist local authorities.
Until Wednesday, Ettenger was one of them.
About 60 of the missing lived on the Bolivar Peninsula, stripped bare by the storm surge that felled beach houses like a bomb. More than 200 were listed as missing on Galveston Island itself, according to a city-by-city analysis of the data conducted for the Houston Chronicle by Bob Walcutt, executive director of the recovery center in Friendswood.
Hot line and rescue workers hope that many people, especially on Galveston Island, will be reunited with family and friends as hurricane recovery efforts continue. More than 145 already have been located through blogs, media Web sites, Red Cross shelter lists, endless phone calls, welfare checks and sometimes dramatic rescues led by the Galveston County Sheriff's Office and other agencies.
Yet disturbing tales told by survivors from Bolivar communities like Gilchrist, Crystal Beach and Port Bolivar suggest some may never return.
"There's still lots of people who are not accounted for," said Capt. Rod Ousley, of the State Parks & Wildlife Service, which is helping to search for survivors or bodies in remote corners of several coastal counties. "We don't know if they got washed out to sea, or buried in the sand or in debris piles. We just keep looking until they come up ... we're just going to keep trying."
Too late for rescue
Still missing is the grandmother of 16-year-old Jerrith Baird. Baird told the Chronicle that Jennifer Mclemore, 58, refused to abandon her beach house in the village of Gilchrist, despite his pleas that she retreat to High Island, where he lives. Mclemore believed her home, battered and rebuilt after Hurricane Rita, could survive a Category 2 storm.
When the first waves of seawater started to flood Gilchrist early on Sept. 12, Baird called the Coast Guard, begging for her rescue. "They said they were doing the best they could," he said. "But by the time they got around to it, the wind was too high. They couldn't fly."
Flights were suspended after about 100 people were rescued from the peninsula, leaving at least 150 still stranded, according to a Sept. 13 Coast Guard press release.
Mclemore holed up at home with her pit bull Hoodoo. At 8 p.m., her cell phone went dead, her worried grandson on the other end.
The next morning, Baird set out to find her the only way he could: he kayaked with a friend about eight miles through the marshes and debris along the ravaged coastline.
"There's really nothing left of Gilchrist. We were kayaking over our friends' cars that were out there that got washed away. It wasn't fun. I was just in total shock," he said.
Hours later, Baird reached the spot where his grandmother's house had stood. Nothing remained except a few snapped pilings, he said.
The search for survivors is an arduous one, stymied by the size and scope of the storm, which propelled wrecked boats as far south as Padre Island.
A handful of volunteer fire department members have led the search on the peninsula itself. Meanwhile, dozens of sheriff's deputies, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Texas State Parks & Wildlife Department wardens are patrolling vast marshlands and other remote areas, including roadless sections of Chambers County where storm debris fields stretch for miles.
Airboats, four-wheelers, search dogs and helicopters are being used to scour areas where the water and wind blew cars, homes and animals, creating seemingly insurmountable piles of wreckage and waste.
"Some of these debris piles are real, real tall and real real wild areas with nothing but boards and nails and snakes and alligators and mosquitoes," Ousley said. "This is some of the hardest recovery efforts we've ever faced with the storm surge and what all it moved and the debris that moved with it."
Washed off road?
Searchers confirm they've also spotted countless cars in the floodwaters and marshes. It's impossible to tell which were once occupied, though so far no bodies have been reported recovered from vehicles sticking out above water. Submerged vehicles are not being searched.
Raul "Roy" Arrambide last heard from his mother, sister and nephew as the three prepared to evacuate by car from Port Bolivar.
Just after 6 a.m. Sept. 12, his sister, Magdalena Strickland, 51, called from the house to say they were leaving. The family's 2000 white Ford Taurus and 1993 maroon Ford pickup were loaded and idling in the driveway. It was a quick call, since Strickland was eager to go.
His mother, Marion Violet Arrambide, 79, along with Strickland and Arrambide's nephew, Shane Williams, 33, had planned to evacuate to Arrambide's house near Dallas. They had two vehicles but no cell phone. They never arrived.
Roy Arrambide fears they were washed off the road.
After the storm, he hired an airboat to visit the area, where he saw dozens of submerged cars in the floodwaters and marshes along the peninsula's lone low-lying highway. But neither he nor anyone else has found his relatives or their vehicles. The house they left behind was damaged but intact.
Eight people, mostly from the Crystal Beach Volunteer Fire Department, have formed the core of continuing search efforts on the peninsula, though the members of Texas Task Force 2 came to conduct rescues, house-to-house reviews and provide other assistance.
"We have not gotten enough help, we're worn out," said Shawn Hall, a member of the High Island Volunteer Fire Department who said he joined the VFD search team for 12 days straight. "We have not had the resources to do the proper searches that need to done." He said they have relied on airboats provided by out-of-state volunteers.
So far, Galveston County Sheriff's Office officials, busy with searches themselves, have not allowed volunteers from Texas' EquuSearch, a nonprofit that specializes in searches, to respond to requests from families of 18 missing people on the peninsula, according to Tim Miller, its executive director.
Also unaccounted for are several transient beach residents who lived in travel trailers on the waterfront in places like Rollover Pass and San Leon.
'She needed to count'
Relatives and friends of the missing said they will keep pushing authorities to expand searches and to establish reliable and complete lists of missing persons.
"I didn't want the same thing in Galveston as in New Orleans, where they had all these unclaimed people after Hurricane Katrina," said JoAnnBurks, who was Gail Ettenger's neighbor and close friend. "I didn't want that for Gail. She needed to count."
Ettenger, a contract chemist who worked for ExxonMobil in Beaumont, loved living at the beach. She rose before dawn each day to walk with Reba, an aging black and white spotted Great Dane who looked like a Holstein calf.
Outside, Ettenger grew towering birds of paradise. Inside, she filled her bungalow with mementos: a wolfskin from New Mexico, a collection of nautical antiques and endless snapshots of Reba and beach sunsets.
All is lost now. Even Reba.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
jcgreen@yahoo.com sent you a link to the following content:
It ain't over til the fat lady gets power
http://houstonist.com/2008/09/22/it_aint_over_til_the_fat_lady_gets_1.php
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Crystal Beach man rode out Ike on log
He spoke exclusively to Eyewitness News about how he survived after his home was submerged in flood waters on Crystal Beach.
The scrapes and cuts don't even begin to tell the story of Mark Davidson.
"I went and got my dog dags and put them on in case I would die that night because it was getting that bad," said Davidson.
Davidson decided to ride the storm out in his home in Crystal Beach on Avenue D. It was a mistake the retired Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer would soon regret.
"And about that time I felt the back of the house, come up just like the stern of the ship and came down on the pilings pretty hard," said Davidson.
Around 1am Saturday morning, his house started taking in water and slowing drifting. By 2am, Davidson decided to get out. The former U.S. Navy diver would be tested to the limit.
"I swam out and as soon as I surfaced, I was level with the roof," he said. "The water was level with the roof."
For the next 14 hours, Davidson would do whatever it took to survive.
"When I was on the telephone pole, then I started looking around and see what was going on that's when I saw houses floating just like bumper boats, just crushing and ripping in half."
The telephone pole he was clinging to soon went under and Davidson knew he had to swim away from all the debris on Crystal Beach.
"Because that was going to crush and kill me," he said.
He began his journey through town using pieces of plywood to maneuver his way around. But it was a patio table he used as a boogie board that he says saved his life.
"I would not let that thing go for nothing," said Davidson.
For the next several hours, Davidson was drifting toward East Bay.
"It was like being dumped under water and then come up for a breath dumped under water, dumped under water and it was like that the entire evening," said Davidson.
But he endured the storm even after an encounter with an alligator and in the end found safety when he finally came ashore at Smith Point. Where the National Guard help rescue him.
"The one thing I was thinking is that I wanted to see my wife, my dog, my brothers and I have a lot of things to finish in this life," said Davidson. "I am not done yet."
Davidson says he is done living on the coast.
Keep your family safe this hurricane season. Check our complete tropical weather preparation guide
All material © 2008 ABC Inc., KTRK-TV Inc. & 2004-2008 LSN, Inc. All Rights Reserved.Story posted 2008.09.20 at 09:10 PM CDT
Friday, September 12, 2008
Houston residents get what they need to stay or go
Sent to you by James via Google Reader:
Residents across the Houston region scurried and scrounged Thursday stocking up on essentials from gasoline and batteries to water and peanut butter, everything needed to endure Hurricane Ike's arrival — or flee its path.
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Monday, September 08, 2008
Call Mid-Week for a More Believable "Sick Day" [Work]
Sent to you by James via Google Reader:
The Asylum blog compiles some solid advice on how to call in sick, even if you don't meet the traditional definition of "sick"—take that how you will. One of the best bits of advice involves the timing of your sick day, as noted by the editor of the Save the Assistants blog:
Pick a random Tuesday or Wednesday for your fake illness. At a lot of companies, there are mysterious sick waves on the day after a long weekend or on a really beautiful day in the summer. You can get away with that once in a while, but if you only come down with the flu on really beautiful Friday afternoons in the summer, everyone will be on to you. Taking off a day in the middle of the week will also make it less likely that you have 400 emails to sort through all at once when you come back from your elongated holiday.
Valid point, and the others are worth keeping in mind also. For more call-in tips, check out Keith's post on hacking your actual call. Photo by Perfecto Insecto.
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Monday, September 01, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Mystery 'iPhone Girl' generates Internet intrigue
Mystery 'iPhone Girl' generates Internet intrigue
By MIN LEE – 2 days ago
HONG KONG (AP) — Who is the "iPhone Girl"?
Pictures of an Asian factory worker found on a new iPhone sold to a British customer have generated keen discussion on the Internet about her identity — and her fate.
The three pictures, posted on the Apple discussion Web site MacRumors.com, show a young Asian woman working on what appears to be an assembly line for iPhones.
Dressed in a pink striped outfit and hat and wearing white gloves with yellow fingertips, the young woman now known on the Web as the "iPhone Girl" is shown smiling and making victory signs as she poses next to an iPhone.
The MacRumors.com user who posted the photos last week, identified as only "markm49uk" from Kingston-upon-Hull, England, said in a posting that one of the pictures showed up on a new 3G iPhone when the iTunes program was launched.
News reports say the woman may work at a factory run by an Apple contractor, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, in the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Susan Eisenhower Leaves The Republican Party
read more | digg story
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Bear attacks inside Anchorage have people on edge
By MARY PEMBERTON, Associated Press Writer
Sat Aug 16, 1:41 PM ET
Even in a city whose logo is "Big Wild Life," the summer of 2008 is testing residents' tolerance for large carnivores.
The problem is bears, black bears and bigger grizzlies. So far this summer, three people have been mauled in the city.
Some people say humans are to blame for the confrontations and insist that no bears should be killed because of the attacks.
On the other side is a growing chorus of people like Devon Rees, who want something done about the big bruins.
"It is pretty much unsafe to walk around at night," he said.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
McCain Cribs Speech From Wikipedia | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
A Wikipedia editor claims that John McCain's speech about the Russian-Georgian hostilities was largely lifted from the website's entry on Georgia. What do you think?
Peter Tong,
Grocer
'Really? I'm going to go put my name in Wikipedia's 'Health Care' article and wait to see if I get mentioned in the debates.'
Blaine Principle,
Systems Analyst
'What a sorry way to treat the nation of Georgia, whose capital, Tbilisi, was featured in Splinter Cell for Xbox and PC.'
Carol Williams,
Quality Control Inspector
'I don't see what the big deal is. I ripped off Wikipedia when you guys asked me about that Kosher meatpacking plant the other day.'"
Monday, August 11, 2008
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Missing sex toys raise concerns at HPD property room
read more | digg story
Monday, August 04, 2008
Bizarre and Hilarious Signs (PICS)
read more | digg story
Sunday, August 03, 2008
McCain's Keating Five Scandal "Rivals Watergate"
read more | digg story
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Queen's Guitarist Publishes Astrophysics Thesis
The founder of the legendary rock band Queen, Brian May, has completed his doctoral thesis in astrophysics after taking a 30-year break to play some guitar.
read more | digg story




