BP Closes Barn Door Too Late

British Petroleum is hiring well integrity engineers.  LOL!

Surftech Standup Surf Board demo @ Stewart Beach

Billyblues reports on G-Town surf that Layne Losee, the Galveston Surftech Rep, is setting up some free demos on Surftech Stand Up Paddle Boards. He is set up out at Stewart Beach by the Volleyball area so if you ever wanted to try some stand-up surfboarding Layne will be there today and tomorrow.

If I can get over my big head from partying with The Sour Mash Band out at the Angleton Icehouse last night I might mosey on down and check it out myself. I’ve been wanting to stand up in the kayak and surf that big bitch down a 6 footer but I need to drop a few more pounds before I’ll be attempting anything that ambitious.. Probably not a good idea but I can’t shake it.

Before I die

I will surf a kayak down the face of a wave like this

Or maybe it will be the cause of my death. Many more pics here.

Check out this crazy mofo and see if you don’t get a few butterflies

I wonder if he survived?

Brazoria County Fair & Parade

The Brazoria County Fair kicks off today with the Fair Parade, which has been an annual event for me for the past many years with the kids. The kids are old enough now that they are more likely to skip it than go, but I still like to mosey on out to practice my photography. You can get a lot of interesting photos at festivals and such.

According to sattelite the cool front that blew through yesterday is just about to edge past us and the weather should be clear and cool for the parade and certainly by this evening if you are one of those who like to hit the fair on the first day. Better take a jacket if you plan on being out after sunset.

The Fair Association’s website seems to be down, but if you are interested in seeing this year’s schedule the cached page is here.

Surfside surf report

Went out to the free beach this afternoon, down near the stranded buoy, and caught a few waves in the kayak. The surf wasn’t as good as yesterday but it was good enough to wipe me out a half dozen times. That takes a lot of fun out of the adventure. Makes you damn tired too. I usually try to keep the wipe-outs to a minimum.

Forecast called for 2 to 4 feet surf but if a fellow was patient and a bit lucky a five footer would roll through in a set every now and then. The southwest wind was kicking it up at 15-18 knots making it a bit choppy, but amplifying the swells too.

Though I wiped out on the conversion several times today, which makes me kind of cranky, I did catch two perfect rides that planed me out on the face for several seconds, well above the level that my paddle could touch the water, and I was able to convert for the secondary ride on the breakers. A few nice rides makes the whole trip worth it.

Whats a conversion? Well, when the breaker first hits the kayak, the kayak tends to go parallel with the wave. When I say it goes parallel, I mean the kayak is suddenly slammed with about a ton of rushing water that causes it to move from a perpendicular position to a parallel position in about a fraction of a second. You have to be ready for the sudden force of the water so you can lean into the breaking wave and brace or into the drink you go. Quick grab your boat before it gets away. Successfully maneuvering the kayak when the wave breaks is what I call the conversion.

As I mentioned in the previous articles about kayak surfing, there is not much control in a 12.5 foot fishing kayak loaded down with a big dude like myself, but if you get your initial lean and brace into the breaker to stabilize the ride, i.e. not wipe out, and then at the right moment lean forward to get the nose of the kayak pointed back towards the beach, and then get some strokes in with the paddle you can get back in front of the wave and ride it some more. Being planed out on the face of a big swell is a nice rush, but converting through the breakers for the secondary ride is the biggest rush. Well, for down here anyway.

On a day with some punchy surf if you can get out in front of a good wave you can ride it all the way to the shore from beyond the third breakers. Three swells, three breakers. That’s better than anything they got at Shlitterbahn.

USA Today Polls 2nd Amendment

I just voted. Click the image to register your vote.

After they get rid of the guns, the churches are next.

Eventually if we continue to elect morons to powerful political offices who specialize in social engineering and who know nothing about the basic mechanics of liberty and freedom, we will get a Supreme Court who says that the 2nd Amendment does NOT give individuals the right to bear arms and voila, it’s done.

After the state disarms all of us who will not surrender our guns, through whatever level of violence is necessary, our children and grandchildren will be at the mercy of whatever silly-assed scheme the conniving and corrupt social engineers foist upon them. Freedom and liberty will mean what they say it means. Our great-great grandchildren wont even know of such a time when people could own guns because the state will excise mention of it from all state curriculum, which will be the only curriculum because they got rid of the churches, remember.

When such a time comes, maybe in our lifetime depending on how old you are, every man and woman, mothers and fathers, will have to make a decision when the state comes a knockin’ whether to hang their head and meekly hand over the guns , or to stand up and fight for liberty and freedom, just like all the those magnificent stories of Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, George Washington and so many other men from the history we were taught in school, which they don’t much teach anymore.

Of course the court will have to be packed with a bunch of morons or disingenuous political activists to get such a decision. See Sotomayer

Tropical action in Southern Gulf

Finally have some tropical action in the southern most part of the Gulf of Mexico

There is definitely some circulation so I’d expect to see an advisory sometime today, maybe within an hour or so. If it continues moving towards the NW we probably wont even see any swell here along the upper Texas Gulf Coast, but we might.

Geocaching Day

Today is Geocaching Day for Discovery Education Network in Angleton, Texas. The first ever DEN Geocaching Day is a “Geocaching 101″ discussion followed by some hands-on geocaching. The Wife is a teacher here in Angleton and she signed us up for the event and we will be heading out for the morning session in about an hour.

I’m not really — so far — a big fan of searching for geocaches but I have been interested in maybe hiding some of my own to see how many people can find them. Let’s say that they would be of the more advanced nature and would require a kayak and some vigorous hiking to reach. And after such a hardy expedition an appropriate reward should be offered for the effort; a reward that has real value and might be provided by a sponsor of that particular geocache.

As some of you know I’ve been talking about a Wordpress plugin to manage private geocache courses for quite a few months now. It has been near completion for about a month but I have been sidetracked by a website project for a paying customer so that took precedence over a personal project. I am now returning to the geocache manager plugin and hopefully it will ready soon.

The plugin will allow anyone with a Wordpress blog to easily setup and manage one or more geocache courses using some handy map tools and a custom database. The plugin will also provide some simple export capability by exposing the XML and KML for copying to your GPS device. A future release will be more advanced and provide for geocache sponsorship and a dynamic reward management system as well as better integration of the import/export feature.

I’m pretty excited about the plugin and can’t wait to release it. Setting up and running a private geocache course is probably a niche area but while building the tools used to create the custom maps it became clear that this little plugin is a suitable foundation for any location based application. Stay tuned for this one. I’ll be talking about it more and more as it gets closer to being released.

In other news:

• Texas Redfish Series kicks off today – Day 2 is a kayak tournament, which I am thinking about entering.
• Hunting, fishing license fee hikes get green light — Of course they did, greedy rat bastards. Not a good time, economically speaking, to raise taxes.
• Texas Commission approves Public Hunting on 44 state park sites – Of course there is an extra public hunting license fee.

Coach-Net: Top 10 RV repairs in 2008

If you are into RV’ing, or Gorving as I like to call it, this article released by Coach-Net provides some useful information:

Leveling jacks and slideouts lead the Coach-Net Top Ten RV Fixes for 2008 list, which tallies the items that generated the most phone calls in 2008 for Coach-Net assistance regarding coach- and towable-related components.

Coach-Net, a leading provider of emergency roadside assistance for RVers, provides a 24/7 on-call staff of RV Master Certified Technicians to help RVers, either with over-the-phone instruction or by arranging assistance from authorized mobile mechanics and RV service centers.

“We are releasing this list to give RV owners a heads-up about the kind of things that RVers have found most troublesome or annoying, so they can pay extra attention to these areas,” said Patrick Cipres, RV technical service manager for Coach-Net. “These all involve components that RVers should make sure are in good working order before they hit the road, and which they should know how to handle and how to troubleshoot if necessary.”

“Of course they can count on our expert help if needed, but we hope that it won’t be,” said Cipres.

Here is the complete list of Coach-Net Top Ten RV Fixes for coaches and towables in 2008:

1. Leveling jacks
2. Slide room
3. Electrical, 110-volt
4. Batteries
5. Electrical 12-volt
6. Plumbing — fresh water
7. Water heater
8. Exterior accessories
9. Generator
10. Furnace

via CampsterGuy

Sleazy Internet marketing

I was looking for some information on Norton Lures so of course I do a Google search for ‘Norton Lure’. From the top listing:

In the area of soft baits, one of the more innovation baits is the Norton Lure. The Norton Lure’s popularity is proof of this. Why is the Norton Lure so popular? The answer is simple. The Norton Lure is different than most soft baits.

Aside from the Norton Lure, another interesting soft bait is the new, patented Walking Worm – from NGC Sports – a world leader in the development of scientific fishing lures. NGC Sport’s Walking Worm is extremely unique because it utilizes a patented design concept of…

The rest of the article is about the Walking Worm.  So, why is this ‘review’ of the Norton Lure sleazy? Well, in a very brief article the keywords ‘Norton Lure’ is included nine times with internal links  back to the company that makes the Walking Worm.Smart, but sleazy and dishonest.

In effect, what this marketer has done is steal Norton’s brand value by hijacking their key words and redirecting people looking for Norton Lures to the Walking Worm.This not only steers Norton business to the Walking Worm, but lessens the value of the Norton brand.

If I was Norton, I would send a cease and desist letter and then I would begin efforts to ensure my brand was properly represented in the top ten Google listings.

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