Hard drive crash!

Here's the story of a man who put all his valuables onto an external hard-drive for safe keeping. The man's name is Mike Walk. On the drive he had countless pictures, mp3's, videos, and text files. Stuff that had real value to him. Then one day, in the blink of an eye... the hard-drive crashed. All that stuff became trapped in a dead drive.

So beware my friends. Always back up your photos and other valuables onto a data DVD disc. Then store those discs somewhere. If you do this... you will never suffer the loss I had.

There is a [slight] happy ending. I was able to recover several music files (some of my own music), and several thousand photos.

So, learn from my mistakes!! It could happen to you!!!

-Mike

I am without a teaching contract

For the first time in 10 years, I am without a teaching contract. It is kinda nerve wracking. Fear of the unknown...

Nevertheless... I trust The Lord!

The Saga of the Little Champ Plane

So I bought my Dad a remote controlled little airplane for Father's day. Cool! The next day we took it out to an open field to fly it (Monday, June 21st, 2010). It was a little Champ plane from HobbyTown U.S.A.

Well, I flew it for a while and it performed beautifully. It was fun! So I turned the controls over to Dad. He took the plane up and as it went in ever widening circles, it started going behind him. Oh, and it started climbing ever higher. That's when I noticed that the wind had picked up. I ran over to Dad, who was thrusting the controller at me. "Here see if YOU can control it". I tried and tried to gain some measure of control. To no avail.

By this time it was quite high and soaring over a building. I sensed at this time that the plane was out of range so I began running around the building to see if I could see it. It had gone out of my sight past the building and trees.

We never saw the little plane again. It had merged with the infinite.

We searched and searched everywhere it could have possibly been. I walked the neighborhood (streets/alleys), looked in every tree in the area... we posted signs... the plane simply vanished.

Who knows whatever happened to it. I sure don't.

It looked like this...



What a mystery.

UFO's, Aliens, and stuff

I think I need to clear something up. When someone says UFO, what they really mean is ASFOS. UFO = Unidentified flying object. Ball lightning, unknown bird, unknown aircraft, strange cloud, dude in a jet pack, etc. ASFOS = Alien Spacecraft From Outer Space. Little bug-eyed people who fly around scaring people, abducting people, abducting cows, landing in cornfields, etc. We have been conditioned to think of aliens as looking like this: A so-called "Grey Alien". From the cover of "Communion" a book by a guy named Whitley Strieber. 

 Or this...

   

Another example of a so called "Grey Alien" Of course, the image of the "Gray Alien" entered public consciousness thanks to the blockbuster movie, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"... The aliens in that movie looked like this...  

 So how did aliens come to look this way? We have to go back to a couple of people name Barney and Betty Hill. They claim they were abducted in 1961 by aliens and they made a big splash. Their description of their tormentors became the industry standard for aliens from outer space. It was the first of the big abduction stories, so kudos to them for originality...  

Barney and Betty Hill 

Here is their story if you feel like reading it: 

http://alien-ufo-research.com/betty_and_barney_hill/ 

Before Barney and Betty, aliens had a variety of looks. However, they were slowly evolving into the creatures we know and love... Let's look at a few examples...

In 1934 this illustration appeared in a pulp magazine. the story was called "If Tomorrow Comes"... it looks a lot like a modern grey alien head...  

In a cheesy drive in flick released in 1953 called "Invaders from Mars", the alien leader had the big head thing going...  

In 1954 another cheesy movie called "Killers From Space" was made. The aliens were basically human-like, but of special note were their bugged eyes, and the fact that the movie shows an abduction and experimentation on a human... just like in all subsequent abduction stories... Here's the alien with the scary eyes...  

Here is another poster showing a combo of the big head, big eyes, small body... movie is called "Invasion of the Saucer Men"... from 1957...  

Before all these bozos popularized the image of the generic "alien" image, aliens had a variety of appearances. They could look like birds, reptiles, blobs of substance, robots, or just the average man... personally one of the scariest aliens I've ever seen was this salt vampire from Star Trek... YIKES!  

 Another theory is that these things are actually DEMONS! Could be... there have been reports of people making these things disappear by invoking the name of Jesus Christ.

Blow in the head

Have you ever enjoyed an especially hard blow to the head. Needless to say it can be disconcerting. I know, because it happened to me not long back. I had just ordered and picked up a "mess" of BBQ from one our favorite spots... Faith's BBQ. As I was walking to my car I glanced down to make sure that I was carrying everything straight with no spillage. When "pagck-raaaang"! (sounded just like that) It felt like someone had whomped me on the top of the head with a brick-bat. A thrilling jolt of pain shot down through my body and my knees bent quickly. They didn't buckle! No sir! They bent. I was instinctively ducking (albeit after the fact) away from danger. Briefly I thought how humorous this drama must have looked to a person who may have been casually watching the gringo heading to his car with his BBQ, only to endure a massive head shot.

At impact I was walking at a fair clip. I tend to walk fairly briskly, and this time was no exception.

By the way, this was one of those "finger-dabber" hits. You know, when you rub the spot and check your fingers for blood.

So what hit me?

I had actually walked full-force into a head-level Air-conditioner cage. this is it: