Bird Feeder Provides Unanticipated Meals For Hawks

I’m working from home today after yesterday’s tricky flight back. As I was reading my email, I saw a startling flutter of feathers out of the corner of my eye. A young female cardinal had come to visit our birdfeeder. In a flash, though, it disappeared into the claws of a swooping hawk! In an instant both were gone, leaving my jaw gaping at the speed of the attack.

Earlier this summer our feeder was swarming with finches and cardinals. Lately, though, they’ve been scarce. Has the hawk scared them off? I wonder how long it’s been lurking, waiting to scoop up an unsuspecting snack. I also wonder if I could somehow convince it to go after the pesky squirrels.

Today is trash day so I went out the back door to fetch the garbage can. As I walked back inside, I noticed my cat peeking out of the still-open door. She would have made for a tasty feast for the hawk had she been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I have to decide now if its still so cool to have hawks in the neighborhood.

Mission Impossible Proves Possible

I did the impossible yesterday: I got home last night when the flight schedules said it couldn’t be done. My schedule in Oklahoma City had me working into the afternoon on Tuesday, well after the last, 10 AM Southwest connection to Raleigh was supposed to have left. As the meeting progressed, though, I could see that I wouldn’t be needed the whole day. Rather than take no for an answer, I sifted through Southwest’s schedules, thinking there must be some way to get home that night.

I’ve done this thing before, so I had a little experience with it. First I looked for Southwest’s nonstop flights from OKC: these cities usually offered the most frequency of flights. From those cities I may find a connection that leads me to Raleigh.

And so I did! A 3:30 flight would take me to Kansas City, from which I could catch a flight to Chicago and then on to Raleigh, arriving at 11:20 PM. Thirty minutes of checking schedules had found me a way home.

I called the Southwest agents and offered my route. The first agent then hit a wall. For some reason the reservation system didn’t like that routing. He mentioned something about an invalid fare choice or something. Being the clever agent he was, though, he found he could book them as separate flights. I would trade my original flight back to Raleigh for a flight into Kansas City, from which I would start a new, one-way booking to Raleigh through Chicago. The new cost would be $180 more since it was a separate flight, so I had to decide if it was worth it. Once I tallied up the cost of my hotel room and car, however, I realized it was a wash. Might as well spend the night in my own bed. I called them back and booked it.

Once I’d made my arrangements, I realized that if I checked my bags, I’d have to re-check them in Kansas City. This would seriously cut into the time I had to change planes. Though the gap was slated to be at least an hour, I didn’t want to take that chance. I couldn’t even check in for the new flight until I got to Kansas City, so I was facing many unknowns.

I went to my meeting and wrapped up my part a bit earlier than I expected. For a change it was nice getting to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately for me, my spare time was a bit more than I anticipated, as the flight was by then running 45 minutes late. With that in mind, I opted not to check my bags, thinking my hour layover in KC was now cut to 15 minutes. It was then that I ran into my latest episode of TSA follies.

As I waited at the OKC gate, the 45 minute delay stretched into an hour delay. My incoming plane hadn’t even left the ground by the time of my original departure. I could either stew about things or go with the flow.

I made the best of it by striking up a conversation with an Army Lt. Colonel who was eventually bound for Iraq. I had trouble picturing this guy as an O-5 as he was far more friendly and gregarious than my idea of officers. I bet his troops love the guy. Once our flight boarded, he took another seat and I watched as he talked the ear off the lady next to him, both of them occasionally doubling over with laughter.

I left Oklahoma City around 4:50: an hour and twenty minutes late. Even so, we made it to Kansas City in time for my next flight. I was glad I didn’t check my bags, as I don’t think I’d have gotten them through.

The Kansas City airport is unlike any airport I’ve seen. It was apparently built in a time where airport security wasn’t a big deal, and then security was retroactively addressed with glass partitions. I walked off my plane and walked out of the secure area without even realizing it. It was literally ten paces from the end of the jetway to the unsecure area. Security is provided for each group of gates by its own set of screeners. It is horribly inefficient. And I still didn’t have my boarding pass.

Thus I was facing another security check, and was sweating since my flight was due to take off in ten minutes. There were a good number of Chicago-bound passengers in line with me, though, so that gave me hope. I was heartened to learn that the pilots just in front of me in line were the pilots for my plane. We obviously weren’t going anywhere without them, so I breathed a sigh of relief.

We took off a little late but made up time in the air. I had time in Chicago to grab a bite to eat and make it to the gate. The flight to Raleigh was 1/3 full and so boarding finished early. I had the row of seats to myself and chilled out to music for the hour’s flight back. We got in at 11:00, twenty minutes early. I was asleep by midnight.

It was another of my Rube Goldberg travel days, but it worked out just fine. I decided later that the reason Southwest doesn’t show flights through Kansas City is due to that airport’s funky, unpredictable security situation. In spite of all that, though, my actual travel time was about as low as any of the other flights I could’ve taken. I don’t think I could’ve gotten home any faster any other way.

If life is about the journey and not the destination, I must be doing something right.

Transportation Bureaucracy Agency

I’m at the OKC airport and decided to skip checking my bag this time, as I’ll be pressed for time to catch my next plane in the Kansas City airport. Thus I decided to try out TSA’s new liquids-and-gels-in-a-baggie rule. The nice TSA agent at the front of the checkpoint directed me to the nearby news store where I could get a quart bag. Armed with the bag, I loaded it up with the liquids and gels in my travel kit.

Now, I went out a week ago and bought the appropriately-sized bottles and sizes. By the way, the allowed sizes used to be 4 ounces though this size was changed to officially 3 ounces with little fanfare. Figuring I was legit, I confidently marched up to the screening line.

As I approached a screening point with a couple of passengers in it, another TSA agent kindly directed me to a line down the hall. Working under the assumption that this line would somehow be shorter than the one in front of me with two people in it, I blindly followed his directions.

Big mistake. In my new line a new X-ray screener was being trained, and she insisted on spending a full minute on every bag that crossed her path. The line soon ballooned to 30 passengers. I’m not used to getting to know the fellow passengers in the screening line, so I took advantage to chat while we all waited for the rookie to figure out what she was doing.

After ten minutes, it was finally my turn to go. In went my baggie into the bin with my shoes. Laptop, laptop bag, and roller bag followed. I breezed through the X-ray machine without breaking my stride and waited to collect my bags.

That’s when things turned ridiculous. A TSA agent approached the end of the belt, waving my baggie in the air.

“Whose bag is this?” he asked rather loudly.

“Uh, its mine. Is there a problem?”

I expected to see something really dangerous that I’d forgotten to remove, like my nail clippers. Nail clippers are to airplanes as icebergs are to the Titanic, you know. I was surprised instead to see him dangling my nearly empty tube of toothpaste: one with perhaps one or two molecules of toothpaste left in it.

“You can’t take this with you,” he announced in a voice designed for other passengers to hear.

I tried to suppress a smile. “But it’s practically empty! What’s wrong with it?”

“Its too big,” he told me. “You’re limited to 3 ounces.”

While the tube was indeed a full-size tube, it was so empty it probably wouldn’t even tip the scales. I decided to probe the depths of this insanity.

“I’m pretty sure it has less than 3 ounces of toothpaste in it. Couldn’t you weigh it?”

“No sir,” was the all-too-serious reply. “We go by what’s printed on the tube.”

Aha. So if a container actually has the size printed on the side, it gets scrutinized. But all those anonymous plastic travel containers
with no size printed on them at all can pass right through scot-free.

“All right. Go ahead,” I relented, knowing I would’ve tossed the tube in a week anyway. Knowing he had kept the skies safe from clean teeth, the agent smugly dropped the tube into the trash.

The irony is that if I’d left the tube in my roller bag, it almost certainly would’ve passed through without detection. TSA winds up punishing the people who try to follow the rules.

Iraq For Sale

Mr. zman himself, Scott Zekanis, is hosting a screening of Iraq For Sale at his kewl klub called Kulture on October 15th at 7PM. The movie is an expose of the corporations making a killing from the war in Iraq, while soldiers and Iraqi civilians pay with their lives and body parts. Seems kinda wrong, doesn’t it?

Kulture is located at 430 S. Dawson St in downtown Raleigh. Price is free. Come along and find out the scoop about the war profiteers. Then don’t forget to vote next month!

Anna Politkovskaya

Though I never met her or read her words, I was really saddened to hear about the death of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who tried to get the word out about atrocities in Chechnya and corruption of Putin’s government. She sounded like a very brave woman, indeed. The cause of truth and human rights has taken a significant hit with the loss of this crusader. This could be the tipping point where Russians clean up their corrupt and lawless society, but I am pessimistic.

I fear for Russia’s future and, by extension, our own.

Blackout Blues

Blackout Blues
Widespread Panic

Hope you don’t mind me barging in the door
In the middle of the night
Hope you don’t mind me barging in the door like this
In the middle of the night

Falling in and out of bars on my own
Pick my head up off the ground
Continue reading →

Licensed To Il

I vividly remember my visit to Pusan, South Korea in 1989. It was one of the first foreign ports in my Navy career. The icy cold wind blowing from the mountains seemed the perfect companion to the very real tension in the air. Everywhere I went there was this ominous feeling that even after fifty years of uneasy truce, Korea was still on the front lines.

I’m a little dubious of North Korea’s claim of conducting its first nuke test, but not because I think its not true. I simply don’t think its their first. Back in the early 1990s, a small-scale nuclear test was conducted in China. Though China claimed it was their own, I’ve always wondered if North Korea tested their own device in China to avoid arousing suspicion.

And knowing what I know about international diplomacy, I don’t buy for a moment all the official “condemnations” from various nations. Countries routinely say one thing while doing another. Certainly some of them, perhaps China especially, have benefitted from feeding Kim Jong Il’s obsession with nuclear weapons. North Korea’s need for oil will make it only a matter of time before Iran has their own nukes. Or at least nukes from North Korea.

No one has any easy answers for North Korea. Its a problem left unsolved. Now that nukes are in the mix that problem has just gotten far more difficult.

Weekend Whirlwind

We had a fun, if abbreviated, weekend. A lot of stuff got done during it, too. I cooked everyone breakfast Saturday morning before heading out to a workday with Hallie’s preschool, Children’s House of Raleigh. There I helped move a bunch of junk from their garage and out to a dumpster. Upon getting back I ventured into our attic to retrieve our Halloween decorations, taking time to vacuum all the dust that got all over stuff when Kelly and I added insulation this summer.

Once the kids were heading for their naps, I cleaned out the garage. Then I returned some things to Lowes and picked up a new fluourescent light fixture and a new faucet for our kitchen. The light went up in 15 minutes and the faucet went on in about 2 hours. Normally I’d have a new faucet on in an hour or less but the one I was removing was cemented on for some crazy reason.

After we enjoyed some time with the kids, we put them to bed and started up our movie, Side Effects. It was decent flick but not worth rushing out to rent.

Sunday we thought of going to the Art Museum [warning: excessive orange!] for some kiddie fun but we had some discipline issues that changed our plans. Then, because I’ve been traveling so much, I made a map of the United States with “Where Is Daddy?” on it so that the kids would know where their father is when he’s not around. The kids loved it and spent lots of time coloring in the states. I thought it would be fun for them to know where I am but looking back on it it seems kind of sad that I have to do that.

We were then off to the nursery to go tree shopping. At first we didn’t think we had time to plant anything, but we opted to walk out with three crepe myrtles anyway. I had them in the ground in a little over an hour, leaving me just enough time to eat lunch, pack my bags, and make my flight out here. So here I am.

Now, its bedtime. So long!

Oklahoma!

I’m in Oklahoma tonight and for the next three days, getting a new partner trained on the product. It’s my first visit to Oklahoma, which is surprising when I think about it. I’ll have to fill out one of those “states visited” maps sometime to see what I’ve got left. It isn’t much.

The flight on Southwest was wonderful as usual. The guy next to me remarked out of the blue about how puzzling it is that some airlines’ flight attendants are always so grumpy while Southwest’s are always so cheerful. I had to agree. Southwest makes flying fun. I’m always smiling when I step off their planes.

N&O Covers Self-Powered Homes

The News and Observer’s John Murawski had a nice feature about local folks generating their own electricity. That hack. I swear he steals his ideas from MT.Net.

Fortunately, I never talked about the cool wind turbine available from Amazon.Com. For 800 bucks you can crank out 400 watts! Wind power gives you the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to getting off the grid. If you live in a windy climate, a wind turbine is definitely the way to go. In fact, I can think of at least one person who might love to put one on his beach-bound RV.

Amazon also sells a much bigger turbine that kicks out 900 watts for $2,300. And of course the best thing about buying from Amazon is that the shipping is free.