From what I understand the roof collapsed at the Big Lots in Milford (not too far from where I live) as well as a roof either caved in or collapsed at the Milford Walmart. If you have a flat roof – get out there and clear it off!!!
the pictures on delawareonline.com regarding the snowfall in Sussex look all a lot more harmless than the view out of my windows. They show a few inches of snow while I was stuck up to my “you know what” trying to walk to the pole building. The snow is higher than the snowblower, so I can’t use it. All the trees lining the driveway are so full of snow that they are not only drooping but entire tress are laying across the driveway. My pussy willows were almost flattened but I was able to shake the snow off of them. In the backyard you can’t tell where the deck ends and the above ground pool starts. The snow came all the way up to the third step onto the deck. Another few inches and our Satellite Dish would have been under the snow. The snow is all the way up to the top edge of the AC units.
looks like over 2 feet, close to 3 feet outside our house. Power off since 3am this morning, just came on, think it will leave us again. House was down to 50 degrees – effin cold. can’t leave the dogs alone though.
it can stop snowing now
I am trying to get it to look just right and it is a pain in the behind. However, if I wasn’t doing this, I’d have to watch the Ravens play the Colts – looking athte current score – 3:10 – I am not missing a lot, am I?
Looking at the per capita rates, Delaware ranks fifth in the number of sex offenders (per familywatchdog.us)
| state | number of offenders | population in thousands | offenders per million |
| MT | 4729 | 1006 | 4701 |
| MI | 42644 | 9763 | 4368 |
| AK | 2596 | 700 | 3709 |
| WI | 19335 | 5479 | 3529 |
| DE | 2612 | 800 | 3265 |
| SD (more…) |
With the new year always come new spammers (they just give themselves new computers and Internet providers as a gift or something). Happens every year.
So for a little while I will hold some comments in moderation but people who have a comment approved will be able to post more after that. Just trying to cut down on this until people back off the spamming once again and things will go back to normal. Unfortunately, Spammers don’t put tons of hyperlinks into their spam anymore, so that doesn’t work as a filter anymore. Oh Well.
Anyway, that’s all for now, I am tired and don’t feel like playing online.
Let’s hope 2010 is a better year than 2009 was.
lots of people and cars – doesn’t look like much, but I bet it sounds awesome there
Sylvester is what Germans call New Years Eve. There are parties all over Germany and everybody counts down to midnight, toasts with champagne, and the parties start. They are rarely over before 3 or 4 in the morning (here it seems everybody waits for midnight and then goes home). Midnight is when it all starts. Kids of all ages go outside after they toasted each other with champagne and we light up fireworks. In front of houses, behind houses, on top of the buildings – fireworks everywhere. An entire city glowing, deafening sounds, and the smell of gunpowder. Yeah, that’s how New Years is supposed to be. You have to see it to believe it. It is midnight over there in twenty-some minutes. You may be able to get a glimpse of the fireworks at one of the web cams, not sure though. One is here:
PLEASE send an email to Universalsports@Directv.com and ask DirectTV to add Universal Sports to the lineup before the Winter Olympics start so we can get at least SOME KIND OF good coverage. UNIVERSAL carries soem awesome sports that other channels just will not cover, such as cycling, and that VERSUS did cover before DirecTV got rid of it.
PLEASE PLEASE…I’d get to watch Ski Jumping and Luge on TV and not just those extreme sports that the other channels soemtimes cover, but the traditional winter sports. I don’t care for extreme winter sports, I am a traditionalist. Plus, I am tired of getting HIGHLIGHTS and stuff cut together, I want to see the whole event!
From Delawareonline.com
December 26, 2009
Delaware’s broadband not quite up to speed
Initiatives under way to expand rural service
By DAN SHORTRIDGE
The News JournalRay and Barbara Pettyjohn are stuck in a technological no-man’s land.
They live on a rural road between Georgetown and Millsboro, about a mile each way from the nearest high-speed Internet connection.
So when Ray has to process payroll online for his school bus business, Barbara has to take their laptop into Georgetown to hook up to a wireless access spot.
Local companies offering broadband access “want an arm and a leg and a small fortune to run it down here for us,” Ray Pettyjohn said. “Here we are, in limbo.”
The couple is far from alone. Rural areas run far behind more urban and developed regions of the country in having access to high-speed Internet, which has become less of a luxury and more of a necessity for doing business, taking courses and conducting research — let alone entertainment and idle time-wasting activities.
But two initiatives are hoping to lay the groundwork for changing that state of affairs here.
Delaware’s technology agency was recently awarded a $1.5 million grant to map out the state of broadband access and plan for future expansions, and a project spearheaded by the University of Delaware focusing on Sussex County brought stakeholders together at a workshop over the summer to discuss the state of broadband.
Part of the challenge in discussing high-speed Internet access is that authorities and researchers don’t have a lot of data about where and how it currently exists, said Troy Mix, an assistant policy scientist with UD’s Institute for Public Administration.
“You can kind of talk about all these things in generalities — yeah, there are pockets where there aren’t connections, [but] by and large across the U.S., policymakers don’t have a great picture of where broadband is and isn’t, who’s using it and who isn’t,” said Mix, who helped organize the Sussex Broadband Project to bring groups and agencies together. “It’s tough to address an issue if it’s not really well-defined.”
That effort will start here in Delaware next year, funded by a federal grant awarded last month to create an interactive broadband map, said Michael Hojnicki, chief customer officer for the state Department of Technology and Information.
The final product will include a searchable public database, detailed down to the census block, of where access is available. Internet providers will be responsible for updating the map regularly and keeping it current, Hojnicki said.
The initiative is important to more than just technology enthusiasts or Internet geeks. Broadband access is increasingly important to residents and companies looking to move to an area, Hojnicki and Mix said.
“Broadband access can help drive economic development and recovery,” Hojnicki said.
Mix said the emerging reality is that broadband needs to be considered part of a community’s services, just like roads and other public works.
“You need to add broadband infrastructure to the list with drinking water and wastewater,” he said. “Everything from online banking and booking a trip online, to getting your GED or pursuing higher education, or staying in touch with your grandmother who lives out of state and doing it over a video … you need broadband Internet for most of those applications.”
Brian Parton of Felton is one of those people located outside standard service Internet service areas. He said the low number of houses on his road makes it impractical for Comcast to run cable to the area, and it’s too far for DSL service as well.
He’s tried satellite Internet, but said it can be slower than dial-up access via a phone line, and expensive to boot.
“On average, if I wanted to watch a 30-second video, it takes about 45 minutes to download so I can watch it,” Parton said.
Internet providers say they are expanding to serve as big a market as possible. Comcast has invested more than $100 million since 2001 in its Delaware network, and this year sped up its services to include “wideband” technology in Kent and Sussex counties, said spokeswoman Aimee Metrick.
Part of the money headed to the state, about $470,000, is designated for broadband planning efforts. The state can’t fund broadband expansions itself, Hojnicki said.
“We’re just looking for those ideas that we didn’t think about … ‘OK, we have an area in the state that is unserved or underserved, what can we do?’ ” he said.
OK, rather then using 1.5 million to DISCUSS it, I could use a 10K grant to actually get the cable to my house and those of my neighbours – many of whom have children who could really use it for school and such.
In the latest Newsweek there was an interview with the founder of Amazon.com. The interview focused a lot on the success of the Kindle, Amazon’s digital reading device that allows people to download entire books and read them on the go. The Kindle has been more successful then expected and digital book orders at Amazon are very high.
One of the questions asked during the interview was if he (Jeff Bezos) believed that printed books would one of these days be totally gone and obsolete and his answer was “Yes”.
That thought makes me sad. I am a self-confessed bookaholic. I love books. I learned to read when I was three years old and have been an avid reader ever since. As a kid I would go to the library and often stay for hours, reading a book while there and taking another two or so home just to bring them back the next day – read. I would get in trouble in school because instead of listening to the teacher I would hide a book under the table and read. Bookstores where to me what music stores were to many of my peers — some sort of paradise. When we read a book in school, I was always finished with it before we ever really started it. I have spent to to three hundred dollars easily in bookstores when I had the money, and leaving with only one or two books leaves me feeling sad an empty. If I could, I would have an entire room lined with library shelves and full of books that I love. So the thought of books without pages – no way, not here, please never — ever. Unless it is printed on paper, unless you can grab the edge of the paper and turn the page, unless you can physically put a real bookmark between the pages and write dedications in the front or even press flowers between the pages – unless you can do all that, it is NOT a book.
I like holding a book, preferably Hardback, in my hands, flipping through the pages, reading the back cover and front cover and inside covers, I like to take off the cover to look at the design of the fabric. I like to look at the typeset, check inside when it was first published, and, most of all, I like the smell and feel of the pages between my fingers and the ease with which my eyes scan the pages and then read them, taking in one letter at a time, line after line, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter, book after book. I like how stories in books can make me feel. Sometimes I read slow and deliberate and turn the pages almost hesitant, scared of what might happen next. Other times I will quickly turn the page, impatient, wanting to know quickly what happens next. Will it be what I want it to be or will the author take me elsewhere? I like to get into a good book in such a way that at times it is hard to tell if I am in the book or reading the book, if the book is fantasy or reality. I have read books that made me cry, books that made me scream out in anger, books that made me laugh out loud, and books that made me feel vulnerable or strong or mad or sad. I even have read books that made me feel sick to my stomach. Rarely ever does a book leave me without any emotion, without a reaction.
There have been times that I wondered what happens to the words, the letters, the people that have come to live on the page while I read the book – what happens to them when I close the book or when someone else reads the book. What happens to all those emotions that you have when you read a good self-help book? That’s one of the reasons why I don’t like to share self help books – I put all my thoughts and emotions in then as I read them – they should stay with me and my book. It’s an energy thing.
I cannot imagine clicking a button or scrolling something to change pages. I can not image using a device that needs to be hooked up to something as impersonal as a computer to download books. Heck, I can’t imagine downloading a book – period! To me, books are very personal. They are something very intimate. They are an authors tool of making me part of his or her imagination or world for a while. A world without books printed on paper, bound together put on shelves in a bookstore just waiting to be purchased by me…no thank you. Hold the Kindle, I take a good old-fashioned book instead.
Some of my favorite books:
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