My matey Jamie Gaines reminded me of it being International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Pirate Dave Barry be leading the charge, ARRRRRRRRRR!

Raise a mug of ye favorite grog and bellow a good ARRRRRRRR today!!!

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

We got visited by Hurricane Isabel yesterday. It blew a lot of small tree branches down, but did no significant damage to our property. I’ve seen more debris in the yard after a party at my friend Gerry’s house.

Not even much rain came down, it seems. I kept waiting for the rain to pummel us, but these bands didn’t hold much. I think the dry air already in the area helped minimize the flooding.

Our power stayed on throughout, too, which was a nice change. The part of our neighborhood which had power for days before us in last year’s ice storm was now dark. Karma works that way, I guess. They’re back on now, too, in case you’re keeping score.

In my daughter’s short 15-month life, she’s lived through a drought, a wicked ice storm, a deluge of rain, and now a hurricane. Maybe by the age of two she can add an earthquake, meteor strike, or something a little more exciting. Or not.

It’s back to work as usual today as I have an early demo. This weekend, I get the impression I’ll be doing a bit of yard work.

I’ll have to find time to write about the time I spent volunteering yesterday at the local shelter. It deserves a post of its own.

I’m finishing up the HIPAA Summit trade show in Baltimore today. It’s been a dismal failure as far as the amount of traffic we’ve gotten here, in spite of our prime location at the front of the room. I can count on one hand the number of good leads we’ve gotten, and nothing is sure about that, either.

I plan on taking the train from Baltimore to Washington and then hopping the METRO to Springfield, where I’ll meet Kelly and Hallie. We’ll then drive the 5+ hour trip back to Raleigh with the aim of getting there at Hallie’s bedtime.

A few days later, we’ll deal with a hurricane. Woo woo. It’s been a very interesting two weeks, and promises to be an interesting few more.

It promises to be an interesting week with Hurricane Isabel becoming an uninvited guest later this week. Kelly and I are still in Virginia through Tuesday and are seriously considering cleaning out The Home Depot here before heading back to North Carolina. It shows that I’m woefully unprepared for hurricanes, not having the least bit of emergency supplies available.

I can really do without hurricanes now after Fran and Floyd and Dennis had their fun here. Since the ground is so saturated from a year full of nonstop rain, I’m really dreading the effect of 150 MPH winds on our trees. Seems like they were just beginning to recover from Fran’s effects seven years ago.

Isabel isn’t forecasted to make landfall until Thursday, but it’s already freaking me out. Southern hospitality does not apply to hurricanes.
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A national day of mourning is appropriate. The legendary Johnny Cash has died.

I’m gonna have to find a place around here where I can buy a black cowboy hat.

I had this photo montage hanging around on my computer since the attacks two years ago. It serves as a nice reminder that we Americans are not alone in this world. How unfortunate that so much of the good will evidenced in these photographs has been squandered by our current leaders.

Take a walk through these photographs and remind yourselves what it’s like to have friends in the world.

I’m going to do something most Americans aren’t planning to do today, and that is celebrate an anniversary. Unlike the rest of America, I have something wonderful to celebrate today: my wedding anniversary. It was a gorgeously beautiful day on September 11, 1999, and every September 11 since has been equally beautiful, in spite of others’ feeble attempts to ruin it.

I spent a moment yesterday looking at some photographs of my then-bride-to-be. I felt the same giddiness I felt then when our love was just beginning. Last night I shared my feelings with my wife, embracing tenderly as we whispered our love to each other once again.

I am such a lucky man to be Kelly’s husband. Every day is a shared journey filled with happiness. I can think of no better co-pilot than my wonderful wife.

“Those whom God has joined together let no man/terrorist/evil shadow government put asunder.”

Bush dropped his dog Barney last week, prompting Fark to hold a Photoshop contest of the event. It was one of the funniest I’ve seen.

I read yesterday’s New York Times as we were waiting to leave Boston. This weekend, the Times did a feature on the second anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. It turns out some new footage has emerged which captures the moment the plane struck the North Tower, the first of the two to be targeted.

The story of this amazing footage is here, but what is really amazing is watching the footage itself. The Times site has a link to some narrated scenes from the video. It is something you don’t want to miss. If you’ve got Macromedia Flash, cue it up.

At the end of the montage, the clip zooms in on United Airlines Flight 175 as it barrels towards the South Tower. Take a careful look at the fuselage of the plane, underneath the right wing. There is something attached to the plane which should not be there, something almost the size of a jet engine.

A look at this aircraft’s history in photographs doesn’t show any engine-sized appendages. At some point, it was either added to the aircraft (where it would be impossible to hide), or the aircraft that crashed into the tower was not Flight 175 after all.

Also interesting to note is how the explosion of the first aircraft is entirely different from that of the second one. This is in spite of the aircraft being identical models, flying for the same amount of time, and therefore having the roughly the same amount of fuel onboard. Why then is the first impact not the fiery wreck of the second? Where is all the burning aviation fuel? It could be that the first plane was not a 767 at all but a smaller plane. Initial news reports told of a small private plane striking the tower, which may explain the different damage.

While I’m leery of every claim being made about the crashes, it seems to me that there is more going on here than we have been led to believe.

The video from the Times is unlikely to have been doctored. It provides a view from the opposite angle of that which we’ve seen over and over. Could this “offical view” have been set up with the intent of hiding that thing beneath the wing?

Anyway, watch the video. See for yourself. Is it a fake? Or are we viewing evidence that proves a gang of illiterate, boxcutter-weilding hijackers are not the whole story?

Click here to see the strange appendage.