Well, made it back to the MidWest after being away the week between Christmas and New Year's. Actually made it back Dec. 30, so we were NOT on the road when all the snow hit.
Even with all the flooding this week, it was hopping at The Office last night, when I did readings there. Barely walked in the door and had several readings with folks. Then it was quiet for a while. Then I got slammed and had to stay late. Got out of there close to 11 p.m. just as the band really got cranking. If I weren't driving a bit, I probably would have stayed to hang out and listen.
It was fun to be back at The Office after being away for three weeks with all the holiday actitivies. Even without the University being in full session yet, Urbana's kickin'
On another note, we've got a Seven Chakras class here tonight starting at 6:30 p.m. (here in Hoopeston at Beads N Botanicals) and next week another Meditation for Relaxation class. Hope to see ya!
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
The new review template is a go!
After weeks of failed attempts to get my butt in gear, I finally updated the current batch of reviews at the Vault with the new template. Along the way I did a bit of extra work on the reviews so that they would be better. I've also added some little goodies here and there (like a mini-section entitled "THE VAULT MASTER PRESENTS - THE BITTER END" in which I deliver my own brand of justice to films that have lousy or unfulfilling endings) so take a gander at the reviews in the Vault archives and let me know what you think.
This is step one towards changing up the entire site. My next goal is to change the color scheme and look of the rest of the site to better match the reviews and forums. Hopefully this task (and more) will be accomplished before January is through.
That's it for tonight gang, I'm going to bed. G'night b-movie fans! :-D
This is step one towards changing up the entire site. My next goal is to change the color scheme and look of the rest of the site to better match the reviews and forums. Hopefully this task (and more) will be accomplished before January is through.
That's it for tonight gang, I'm going to bed. G'night b-movie fans! :-D
Cool Day
Everyone has been telling me how warm it's been here for the last month. Since I've been here it's seemed pretty cool. Only in the 60's and 70's. After the below zero temps in MN, I was kind of hoping for 90's. Oh well, you take what you can get. At least it was nice and sunny most of the day.
I got back to spraying the verbesina today. It's coming back in as a carpet over many of the areas we did in the fall. We're getting rid of the seed bank at least.
There's a lot more albatrosses here than when I left. The juveniles have come to look for lifetime partners so there's a lot of dancing going on. Sometimes it takes them a few years to find a mate that's good enough for the next 60 years. The older albatrosses are a lot more tolerant of others now since they've found their good nesting spots, so there are a lot fewer fights.
These Black-footed albatross looked like they were in Antarctica yesterday with the sand blowing drifts over them.
Here's the crowded parade field now. Sorry for the dark picture. I'll get a better one when it's sunny.
I got back to spraying the verbesina today. It's coming back in as a carpet over many of the areas we did in the fall. We're getting rid of the seed bank at least.
There's a lot more albatrosses here than when I left. The juveniles have come to look for lifetime partners so there's a lot of dancing going on. Sometimes it takes them a few years to find a mate that's good enough for the next 60 years. The older albatrosses are a lot more tolerant of others now since they've found their good nesting spots, so there are a lot fewer fights.
These Black-footed albatross looked like they were in Antarctica yesterday with the sand blowing drifts over them.Here's the crowded parade field now. Sorry for the dark picture. I'll get a better one when it's sunny.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Back to Work
Today at work it was too windy to do any spraying, so Greg and I just around the island in the golf cart to evaluate and prioritize our efforts. Most of the big verbesina has died, but it's sprouting everywhere and it will grow like crazy with all of this rain we're getting. It will be impossible to keep up with it, but we'll do what we can. That's why it's low stress around here, there's way too much to get done, so we do as much as we can, and feel good that we even made a dent.
I only saw one short-tailed albatross today on this island. It's young so it doesn't have the adult plumage yet like the one over on Eastern Island. It will lose its dark feathers on it's head and get gold ones instead. You can check out the adult on one of my earlier posts.
I only saw one short-tailed albatross today on this island. It's young so it doesn't have the adult plumage yet like the one over on Eastern Island. It will lose its dark feathers on it's head and get gold ones instead. You can check out the adult on one of my earlier posts.
This white tern looked like it was almost dead because it was so tired from hanging on to the branch in the strong wind. Greg and I put some bark in front of it as a windbreak so I hope it will get some rest now.
This Laysan albatross is liking the windy day as it flies over Rusty Bucket.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
6 More Months
I'm back to the warm weather. Thanks for all the messages and congratulations. Now I'm not planning on being off island until I leave in June.
It's been rainy here so far. That means the verbesina will be sprouting up like crazy soon.
We started our visitor program now and our first group of people came out yesterday. They are teachers and people in a position to educate others about Midway and the other Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. I think they're liking it so far.
We've got 2 short-tailed albatross on the island now. They are both juveniles and are dancing together, so that's a good sign. The one over on Eastern island is still there by itself.
Well I'll leave it there for now and give you a couple of pictures.
This was Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago.
It's been rainy here so far. That means the verbesina will be sprouting up like crazy soon.
We started our visitor program now and our first group of people came out yesterday. They are teachers and people in a position to educate others about Midway and the other Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. I think they're liking it so far.
We've got 2 short-tailed albatross on the island now. They are both juveniles and are dancing together, so that's a good sign. The one over on Eastern island is still there by itself.
Well I'll leave it there for now and give you a couple of pictures.
This was Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago.
This was Midway this afternoon.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Spammers beware......
For the past couple of weeks I've been getting Spam from a gmail account. At first I just deleted the e-mails and went on with my life, but lately, they've begun hitting my inbox more frequently and at a greater volume. Today, whilst cleaning out the offending spam e-mails, I decided to take action. My first step was to register with SpamCop.net and report the offender. My abuse report was issued mere moments ago, and sent not only to SpamCop, but to Google's Abuse Team as well. With that done, I decided to drop a friendly e-mail to the spammer in question. Here is what it said:
Dear Spammer,
This is a polite request for you to stop sending me Commodity One e-mail offers. I don't know why I get them, but I do, and I find them annoying. I have already contacted Google's e-mail abuse team via SmapCop, so you should be hearing from them within a week or two, and hopefully will be banned from your current gmail account, and future gmail accounts as well. If you continue to send e-mails, I will continue to report you until action is taken. That is not a threat, but a promise.
Thank you for your consideration in halting the consistent flow of junk e-mail into my inbox. If you keep sending spam, then may ye burn in Hell for all eternity.
Very Sincerely Yours,
Jordan Garren
Caretaker of The B-Movie Film Vault: http://www.bmoviefilmvault.com
Fighting the Good Fight for B-Movie Lovers Since June 6, 2000!
For now, I'll just have to wait and see if anything is done about this annoying sender of spam. If not, I'll have to go covert, infiltrate their secret organization, and terminate them with extreme prejudice.
Also, in non-spamming news, I updated my reviews for "The Monster Squad" and "The Johnsons" last night. That only leaves three more full-fledged reviews to update to the new template. Once that is done, I will upload them to the server for all the world to see! Then begins the work on the rest of the site. In addition, I really need to write up a new review or two, as well as some capsules in order to get visitation to the Vault back up to its normal state. In regards to the capsule reviews, I haven't come up with a surefire format for them yet, but I think I'm very close to a template I'm happy with.
Well that's all gang! I'm off to work now, then I'll have the next three days off. I'm spending a lot of time with my best bud Chris because he is going away to Kutztown University next week to begin enjoying some higher learning. Wish him luck!
Also, his departure means that I'll need a new best friend. Send all "I wanna be your best friend" applications to vault_master@bmoviefilmvault.com! Club benefits include long hangout sessions involving movies, video games, visits to movie theaters; thriftless spending of money on unnecessary toys, movies, video games, and electronic devices; most importantly, you will be granted access to my amazingly gi-normous DVD collection.
Hahahaha. Just kidding actually. Chris is irreplaceable, and even if he could be replaced, "getting in good" with me, and being allowed to actually borrow movies from me, the DVD Miser, takes a great deal of time. Adios fellow b-moviephiles and keep fighting the good fight!
Dear Spammer,
This is a polite request for you to stop sending me Commodity One e-mail offers. I don't know why I get them, but I do, and I find them annoying. I have already contacted Google's e-mail abuse team via SmapCop, so you should be hearing from them within a week or two, and hopefully will be banned from your current gmail account, and future gmail accounts as well. If you continue to send e-mails, I will continue to report you until action is taken. That is not a threat, but a promise.
Thank you for your consideration in halting the consistent flow of junk e-mail into my inbox. If you keep sending spam, then may ye burn in Hell for all eternity.
Very Sincerely Yours,
Jordan Garren
Caretaker of The B-Movie Film Vault: http://www.bmoviefilmvault.com
Fighting the Good Fight for B-Movie Lovers Since June 6, 2000!
For now, I'll just have to wait and see if anything is done about this annoying sender of spam. If not, I'll have to go covert, infiltrate their secret organization, and terminate them with extreme prejudice.
Also, in non-spamming news, I updated my reviews for "The Monster Squad" and "The Johnsons" last night. That only leaves three more full-fledged reviews to update to the new template. Once that is done, I will upload them to the server for all the world to see! Then begins the work on the rest of the site. In addition, I really need to write up a new review or two, as well as some capsules in order to get visitation to the Vault back up to its normal state. In regards to the capsule reviews, I haven't come up with a surefire format for them yet, but I think I'm very close to a template I'm happy with.
Well that's all gang! I'm off to work now, then I'll have the next three days off. I'm spending a lot of time with my best bud Chris because he is going away to Kutztown University next week to begin enjoying some higher learning. Wish him luck!
Also, his departure means that I'll need a new best friend. Send all "I wanna be your best friend" applications to vault_master@bmoviefilmvault.com! Club benefits include long hangout sessions involving movies, video games, visits to movie theaters; thriftless spending of money on unnecessary toys, movies, video games, and electronic devices; most importantly, you will be granted access to my amazingly gi-normous DVD collection.
Hahahaha. Just kidding actually. Chris is irreplaceable, and even if he could be replaced, "getting in good" with me, and being allowed to actually borrow movies from me, the DVD Miser, takes a great deal of time. Adios fellow b-moviephiles and keep fighting the good fight!
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Welcome to 2008.
Well its a new year, and I've already started to break my Resolutions. (They are so hard to keep! Especially when you're surrounded by junk food, day in and day out.) My Christmas Party went well, and New Year's was nice and quiet. I got a lot of cool gifts (the Nintendo Wii and City of Heroes/City of Villains being the top two), added some movies to my growing collection (thank goodness for gift cards!), and I am so glad that the holidays are over with because I am exhausted. Emotionally, physically, spiritually.... what have you.
I hope all of you other b-movie fans have had a wonderful holiday season, and hope that you can hold to your New Year's resolutions far better than I can. The Vault has been gathering dust (and flies) lately, and I've been kicking myself for letting it go for so long. While November of 2007 was a triumph for the Vault (well over 7,000 unique visitors to the site), December was a sad month, with only 4,000 or so unique visitors. So hang in there a bit longer because I am going to start working on the site again. The new review template is almost in place in all of the older reviews and the Forums are still pretty active (well, as active as can be with only six people), so at least I got that going for me. ;-)
In the meantime, if you're sick of my lack of updates, please direct your traffic to www.badmovies.org. Andrew has just started up a Badmovies.Org PODCAST and the "pilot" episode is now online. Just make sure you're not drinking anything while listening to it. ;-)
Happy New Year b-movie fans!
I hope all of you other b-movie fans have had a wonderful holiday season, and hope that you can hold to your New Year's resolutions far better than I can. The Vault has been gathering dust (and flies) lately, and I've been kicking myself for letting it go for so long. While November of 2007 was a triumph for the Vault (well over 7,000 unique visitors to the site), December was a sad month, with only 4,000 or so unique visitors. So hang in there a bit longer because I am going to start working on the site again. The new review template is almost in place in all of the older reviews and the Forums are still pretty active (well, as active as can be with only six people), so at least I got that going for me. ;-)
In the meantime, if you're sick of my lack of updates, please direct your traffic to www.badmovies.org. Andrew has just started up a Badmovies.Org PODCAST and the "pilot" episode is now online. Just make sure you're not drinking anything while listening to it. ;-)
Happy New Year b-movie fans!
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