Fly by the pound.......

In reaction to a recent commuter airline plane crash the
FAA is now recommending that the airlines weigh passengers before boarding. It seems that extra weight in the tail section of the doomed aircraft contributed to the crash.

If my recent experiences of being squeezed in between super-sized travelers are any indication, I think this may be an excellent idea. In fact this may have real promise in readjusting airline rates.....and as an incentive for supersizers to lose weight. Ticket prices could be based on the fliers weight. So as not to be to insensitive, the tickets could be named like clothing is sold. Small, Medium, Large, Xtra Large and Wal-Mart size.......XXXLarge.

This seems quite equitable too. Even though all passengers are taking up [in theory] only one seat, an aircraft uses more fuel to haul heavier loads, and aviation fuel is a very large component of the bottom line cost of a ticket. Why should a 195 lb. man pay the same as a 350 pound traveler? Could this also spawn whole new sectors of air travel? Weight Watchers Air, Lean Cuisine Air.....and "I'm Sorry Sir, you are over our weight limit, may I refer you to Golden Corral All You Can Eat Buffet Air?"

The funeral....

I've just returned from the funeral of a good friend. Nancy and I belong to an organization in which we saw each other quite often, sometimes once a week. After the first of the year, and with our wedding, I haven't been in attendance at the organizations meetings as often as normal so I was surprised three or four weeks ago to see Nancy in ill health. She had been at their home in Santa Fe and fallen ill with pneumonia. But she, along with her husband Tom, seemed upbeat about her recovery. As always, Nancy was full of optimism and vim though with not quite so much vigor.

So it came as quite a shock on attending the meeting yesterday to learn that Nancy had passed away this week. I learned this from husband Tom, who was at the meeting as usual. It turned out that Nancy had been battling cancer for quite a long time. As was her way, I don't recall her ever mentioning her illness and certainly not uttering a word of complaint or sorrow. The organization that brought us together teaches us to help others as a way out of our own problems, and Nancy lived up to this credo as much as anyone I know.

The older I get, the more funerals affect me. They remind me to live life to the fullest and to hope that, when I realize that I am going, that I can be as courageous, accepting, and charitable about my fate as people like Nancy. The funeral service was a tribute to her life and postitive attitude attended by people from all walks of life. One of the healing things about the funerals I attend in the town the size of Midland, is that I get to see friends and acquaintances that I haven't seen in ages. Important people thoughout my lifespan. Like the neighbors who lived across the street from me when I was a kid, high school classmates that I don't run into often or old friends of my parents who knew my as a ten year old. It makes me feel both young and old at the same time, but confirms the continuity of life.

Tax hogwash debunked......

If you believe what some members of a certain political party say, you might think that the poor average Joe Worker bears the brunt of the Federal income tax burden. If you did believe this hogwash, you'd be terribly wrong. This recent release of tax data sets the record straight. The income level with which I'm familiar, the top 25% and above, pays over 83% of all Federal income taxes collected. And not to sound like a millionaire, the top 25% starts at only about $53,000 a year in earned income. The top 1% level of income tax payers shoulders a whopping 36% of total income tax paid.

The entire bottom 50% of wage earners contributes only about 4% to the Federal income tax stream. The top 50% pays 96%. Keep these facts in mind the next time you hear a Democratic candidate whining about the drain that income tax has on Joe Average.

Thanks to Dr. John Ray of Australia for pointing out the facts to America.

Statehood.....

It seems like almost everyday, someone asks me, "Pancho, just how many of our U.S. States have you visited?" This would throw me into a flurry of counting on my fingers and toes and by the time I was finished, the person who posed the question would be long gone.

Now, with the power of the Internet I can generate and graphically display a map of the results and know that I have visited exactly 86% of all current U.S. States. I am a little short on New England states, having only been to Connecticut and Rhode Island to visit a cousin who lives there. I'd like to go to Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire...but except for the history have no real desire to visit Massachusetts, cradle of freedom, but now also home of some really whacko liberals. Why I haven't been to North and South Dakota I cannot explain, except that my travels have just not taken me there. And Alaska, I won't feel complete without visiting there. A photo safari someday I hope.

I wish this computer generated map had some means of displaying the states in which I've lived too. I have permanently resided in Kentucky, Missouri, New Jersey, Louisiana, Hawaii and Texas. If you add the temporary residences of at least three months, add in Georgia, Maryland and a summer in Lower Manhattan, New York. All good places while I was there, but would not care to live in Louisiana or Georgia again as an adult, or Manhattan permanently. Manhattan is a great place to visit if you stay for no more than five days in a four star hotel. Don't do it for three months in moderately placed accomodations....on a budget.

Thanks to The Brazos Cantina for pointing out this instructive map link.

Midland...time marches on

The "oil boom" of the late 70's transformed Midland. By 1979 when this aerial photograph was taken the population had grown by almost 45% above the number when I first moved here. The building frenzy that accompanied the "boom" [or Big Boom as we call it now] was amazing. For new residents, it was hard to find a place to live. Construction of office buildings, retail, and homes had pushed the town well past Wadley Dr. and out to what would become The Loop.

In this image you can see the western portion of The Loop under construction to about the point where the Wal-Mart would be located. Taking advantage of this growth my Dad, along with Gene Abbott, decided to develop a large vacant tract of land along the loop in the NW quadrant of the city, thus the reason for this photo showing the area in the lower center of the image. This would become Fairmont Park. The light colored area was still an actively cultivated cotton field until the time the development began.

The Northern section of the loop is yet to be begun and much of the retail along the route was not yet in place. The dusty spots to the southeast of the Air Park are the Petroleum Center buildings built by the infamous I. David Porras with much of ClayDesta yet to be started. Of interest is the large vacant tract at the bottom of the photo where the "Midland Dr." tag is. At about this time, Texaco had optioned this land to build a large corporate campus to house their regional offices, a deal in which I was involved. But wiser heads prevailed and they moved into the Heritage Center near downtown. And several years later the bloom was off of the rose....the Big Boom was over.

While the Mrs. is away......

The wife and mother is away for the weekend on a ladies church retreat. Deserting us on Valentines Day. We hope she is having a swell time, 'cause the boys at home sure are.

It's just 10 y.o. Jack and me at the house. Last night we had Frito Pie© for dinner with Valentines candy for desert. We then took in a Midland High basketball game and were out till 10 p.m. A rollicking good time. This morning up early for a breakfast of chocolate Ovaltine© and donuts, no showers or change of underwear and then we were off to an 8:30 a.m. basketball game for Jack's youth league. Still no showers and then Jack departed for the movies with his GrandPa. While Jack was out, his girlfriend stopped by and was disappointed he wasn't home. So little time.

Tonight it's out on the town once again, as Jack and I are dining at Luigi's with some Italian cuisine. After that, who knows! Anything's possible with two guys on the loose. We may come home, put our pajamas on over our dirty underwear and socks and watch a manly DVD, like Toy Story II. We do miss Mom, but this bachelor male bonding is a needed thing sometimes.

Northwest Midland.....1961

Due to the amazing depth of interest from all three readers of Streams in yesterday's walk down memory lane, I have posted another photo of Midland as it was in 1961. This of the Northwest quadrant of the city viewed from the intersection of Cuthbert and the Andrews Hwy at the lower right. My Dad had labeled points of interest, and in fact ended up building a Shell service station where I have placed the star. It later became an Amoco station when Eddins-Walcher bought out the interests of Fidelity Oil. The building is still there.

There are some very interesting notes in this photo. Notice the large open area running from the foreground out. This later became the Gibson's Discount Center, an early competitor of Wal-Mart. It was an amazingly large building for the time, and decades later became what is now the Hastings Books and Records space, among other shops. The Safeway was a year or so away from opening and has now morphed thru several transitions into an auto parts store.

This photo also shows the old Superior Oil Camp located approximately in the upper leftcenter of the image, and another of the three drive-in movie theaters in town [again, either the Chief or the Fiesta, the Texan was on Hwy 80]. At the SW corner of the Andrews Hwy. and Midland Dr. the "Ye Olde English Village" apartments are not yet built. Today they have deteriorated, burned, been torn down and a new retail center is going in. The Town and Country shopping center was the new "upscale" suburban shopping venue competing with the Village...now known as "Olde Midland". The large, mostly vacant quarter section of land in the right center held a ranch house, the remains of someones large holdings. I can't remember whose family owned this. Readers are invited to help out on this one.

Midland, Texas ca. 1961

We moved to Midland in 1960 when my Dad left Shell Oil and accepted an offer from old time MIdlander John Starr to run Mr. Starr's company, Fidelity Oil. Mr. Starr was associated with Shell Oil, and among other things had the "jobbership" i.e. concession, to own and operate all the Shell Oil company affiliated service stations in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. My Dad was expanding this concession in 1961 and in doing the marketing plan for the location of the new stations he contracted for aerial surveys of possible locations.

And so in the last several years as my folks were cleaning out miscellania of the past, I ended up with all these now somewhat historic photos. I thought Midland readers would enjoy seeing them, and what Midland looked like in 1961.

This photo was taken just south of Wall Street at the Andrews Hwy, looking straight up Garfield Street. It is interesting to note that the northern border of "civilization" was at Wadley Ave. and that even most of the development north of Golf Course Rd. was fairly new as you will notice that the trees are not yet much grown. In the left center of the photo, the building now known as Bank One is just being built. It was originally the Commercial Bank and Trust building. The newly built, Dennis the Menace Park is two blocks to the south.

Computerism ain't easy sometimes....

This is not another "cranky" rant today. Instead it's one of those areas that when dealing with the Internet and computers is just one of acceptance. Acceptance is the key to my serenity today.

Today I got 20+ rejected emails from all over the world telling me that my email didn't go thru because it contained the MYDOOM virus. The problem is.....I didn't send any of those emails and, no, I don't have the virus on my system. I've run two separate checks using the McAfee online system with DAT files updated daily and also a useful and quick little tool from, dare I say...... Microsoft. This is a handy little utility run from their website that instantly scans your computer for this particular virus. I was clean.

No, not me, but somewhere out there someone with my main [non-published] email address somewhere on his/her computer has MY DOOM. Could it be you? Probably not, but if you don't have virus protection or if you haven't updated since January 26th you might want to visit one of the sites linked above.

For the uninitiated virus worms like MY DOOM send out emails from the infected machine but the senders address is pulled from an email address somewhere on the computer files, be it the address book, or email links on saved webpages. And this worm, generates it's own email addresses and so consequently the sender isn't aware that the email is going out, and the recepient has no idea how some stranger got his address. Fun stuff.

The only bright spot, if one can call it that, of this whole episode was that the McAfee scan did reveal several "backdoor" viruses that have probably been on my computer for years. I spent several hours manually deleting the Registry Keys and files that controlled these. One of which had a "keystroke" recorder function. Don't think it was working because I haven't seen any of it's telltale characteristics, but good none the less to have it gone.

Oy Vey.....!
Julie says that she loves me because I'm so "quirky". I am rather quirky and artsy, mostly in a good way, but I have to remind her in all honesty that sometimes I'm just plain cranky, too.

Today I was cranky because I received FOURTEEN [14] bitmap format pictures in one email. The smallest was 350kb the largest over 500kb. And they were all supposed to be funny. It took 20 minutes for this email to download. During which time I had a hard time uploading files to my server for a website I'm trying to finish. By the time the photos arrived I didn't think that they were funny.

Please don't send large format image files in emails! Please don't send 14 image files in one email. If you send pictures via email, resize them and make them Jpeg format....or Gif. Please don't send Bitmap images in emails. Please........

And while I'm on a cranky roll.....please don't send me the 6 Mb Mpeg or Wav file of your favorite beer commercial with the Subject line reading: "Ha Ha Ha...! Have You seen this?" Chances are I have and I really don't feel like getting an email that takes 30 minutes to download and 20 seconds to play. Sorry, that's just the way I am.

International Effort....

There are those who scorn the Internet as a teenagers plaything or a haven for scams, porn, and useless drivel. True, there is some of that, but also there is the opportunity for international assistance in solving weighty problems of massive proportions. Such as fixing our PlayStation2. It doesn't get much bigger than that.

As mentioned in previous entries, I have become more than a little enamored with the PlayStation2 game, Formula 1 Challenge developed by Melbourne House, who are affiliated with Atari. And the more I became addicted to the racing action the more our PS2 seemed to malfunction, coming to the point of inoperability. Apparently becoming dyslexic, it now can't read the disc. To try and solve the problem I searched online geek gamer websites and found some solutions, but none seemed to work. Eventually I went to the Melbourne House website itself to try and gain some insight into the malfunction and hoping to find a contact email address. But, alas, all I could find were local phone numbers in Melbourne Australia, home of the developers.

I was ready to give up when the idea to both solve my dilemma and further international relations came to me. Internet blogmate Bernard Slattery, aka Slatts lives in Geelong just within a light stones throw from Melbourne. Yesterday I emailed Slatts with my plea for help, asking him to phone the gameboys at Melbourne House and to try to obtain an email address. I was not disappointed, as this morning I received a reply from Slatts saying that he had made contact with them and he supplied the direct email address for one of the games developers. Help is on the way. Slatts says that they are an affable lot and would be glad to answer my questions. At this very moment the fate of our PlayStation and my racing career is in their hands. I hope to be back on the track soon.

Bernie's generosity is appreciated and I told him that I would try and reciprocate with his holy grail of requests from Texas....a gen-u-wine autographed picture of Kinky Friedman . I'll do my best.